Poor Yorick
by farewellblindgirl
Summary: Booth, Bones, Beckett and Castle are forced to team up when old enemies come back to eliminate them. Takes place immediately after "The Change in the Game" and "After the Storm." Rated T for language.
1. Chapter 1

A/N:

For the purposes of my universe, I assume that Bones' "The Change in the Game' and Castle's "Always" are contemporaneous, even though the Bones episodes air a year ahead of Castle. So, this story takes place a few days after Bones tells Booth she is pregnant, and Beckett is reinstated (but with a month's suspension). Nothing after Castle's "After the Storm" or Bones' "The Change in the Game" happened...

Theoretically, you should be able to follow along just fine if you've only seen one of the two shows, but I'll try to add in enough detail to help without bogging things down...

* * *

Chapter 1:

He can't get over the feeling that something is wrong.

Special Agent Seeley Booth is not a thinker. That isn't to say he is dumb - far from it. But a lifetime of training, first in bootcamp, and then later Ranger School, Sniper School, and finally the FBI Academy have beaten the habit out of him. Thinking is too often contrary to operation efficiency, he's learned, in bureaucracy-speak. So what's left is gut - a sense of things below the conscious, where it can't interfere with training, but can still keep you from getting yourself dead.

His gut is going wild now.

But he's thinking too, and that's the problem. So much has happened in the last few days*, and he's worried that it's all throwing his gut out of whack. He wonders if this is how his partner feels, her brain going a thousand miles an hour all the time, and how she can possibly function if it is.

Not that he's going to ask her.

Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, anthropologist extraordinaire, best-selling author, partner, and soon to be the mother of his child, gets off the elevator first, leading him down the hall to her place. They've spent every minute of the last few days together, ever since their last case wrapped up and they rushed to the hospital for their friend Angela's labor. It's late and dark, the hallway lights are turning everything into a muted orange, and still he can't figure out what's wrong. Of course, there are issues - they went to dinner specifically to talk about the whole truckload of issues that stand between them now - but it's something else that's tickling his hindbrain and revving up his fight or flight response.

He dismisses it - it's just nerves about the pregnancy and the still unknown quality of his relationship with Bones. But as he tells himself that, it won't go away.

"Booth, I think you still have my keys," Bones says in front of him. She's staring at him. He reaches into his pocket, remembering that she let him drive, even though they'd taken her car. He hated driving the little Prius almost as much as he hated riding in it.

He fishes her keys out from around his poker chip and his phone, and just as he does so the latter begins to ring. He goes to hand her the keys and retrieve his phone when it all converges and he knows, right then, what is wrong. The lights in her apartment are out.

His life has hinged on lesser observations.

He pulls back the keys and quickly shuts down the phone unanswered. Instead, his hands come up with his gun, pointing it immediately past his partner towards her door.

"Booth, what are..."

"Shhh... behind me, Bones," he says, reaching around and moving her out of the way so that he is between her and the door. It took two years at the beginning of their partnership for him to bang into her head that her foyer light should always be on when she isn't home, but like anything, once Brennan had learned that, she'd learned it well. It has never been off since. There is someone hiding in that dark apartment of hers.

He looks back at her. She's grasped the situation, isn't arguing. He shifts his weight, gets ready to kick down the door.

"Booth, that's a steel core door with two four-inch bolts. You can't kick it down."

"When did you get that?"

"You insisted, remember? After Taffet?"

"Okay, I'm going to give you the keys. Unlock the door and open it, but don't push it all the way open and don't go in. Gun goes first."

"I know, Booth."

She keeps saying his name, some deep part of his brain notes. She does that when nervous, but he doesn't think she's nervous about an intruder. She normally wouldn't be, but everything's changed in the last few days, and now he doesn't know.

She unlocks the first bolt quietly, and his phone pings with a text message. He checks the phone. The text is from Hacker.

CALL ME ASAP. GOT REPORT BROADSKY ESCAPED LEAVENWORTH.

He puts the phone back. Nods to Bones to continue. He knows it's not Broadsky on the other side of that door. He's guessing now that there is no one on the other side, but he'll go through first with his gun in position regardless.

Bones has the second bolt released, and gently moves the door in about an inch before sliding back along the wall. He crouches low - if there is someone waiting for them the shots will come at them where his center mass should be - and pushes the door open.

He's through the door, clearing the room left to right as he moves in a crouch to the back of the couch. No bullets pass over his head as he hits his first stop. The bedrooms are down the hall and harder to clear, so he moves first to the kitchen. He glances through the doorway into the dining room. It is cast in long shadows from the streetlights outside and all the lines of the room have gone hard and ugly. He can't see anything.

Go in or keep going? Training says you never leave an uncleared room behind you, but he's still stuck thinking, and so he ignores training and moves on. No one shoots at him as he moves past.

The kitchen is different.

Someone has been here - a single accent light left on is testament to that. It forms a shrine of light in the center of the kitchen counter. Dead in the center is a single sheet of crisp white printer paper. He won't have to look - he knows what it says.

"Bones, it's clear." He holsters his sidearm, knowing he doesn't have to check the rest of the apartment, but worried that what he has found is worse. He walks over to the piece of paper as Bones comes into the room behind him.

"Booth?"

She stands next to him. "Tag, you're it," she says, reading from the paper. "What does that mean?"

"It means we're running out of time already," he says. She questions him further with her eyes, but he ignores her as he pulls his phone out and stabs the number for Hacker.

"Booth," Hacker answers on the first ring, "I just got word..."

"He was here," Booth interrupts his boss. "What happened exactly?"

"Here? Where's here?"

"Brennan's apartment. There's a note. When did he escape?"

"I'll send a team over, don't touch anything," Hacker says, and Booth suppressed an urge to snort. "DOJ says he escaped sometime around two pm, during a prisoner transfer. Killed two inmates, apparently, before doing so. I'm yelling at the DOJ now as to why we..."

"He's after us, sir, Brennan and me."

"Come in immediately, we'll get you under protective custody..."

"No sir, I can't do that. But can you get a detail for my son and his mother, and one or more for the Jeffersonian staff? It's Bones and me he wants, but..."

"Yes, Booth. But why can't you come in?"

"He wants us to do this by his rules, sir. We play by the rules and it's just Bones and me at risk. We don't play, and he'll come after everyone else until we do play."

"Booth, that's ludicrous. We don't play games with..."

"Sir, I'm going to hang up now. Get the details and the crew here to Bones' place. We won't be here when they are. I'll contact you in a few hours. If you don't hear from me in twenty-four hours, he got us."

Booth hangs up before Hacker can speak again, and calls a second number.

"Hodgins," he says when the phone connects. "Mogul."

There is a pause before Hodgins responds, "Done. Sorry... High Dive."

"Good. Good luck, Hodgins."

"You too, Booth."

"Booth, what is going on?" Bones asks when he hangs up again.

"Bones, do you trust me?"

"Implicitly, of course, Booth. I have found..."

"Okay," he interrupts. He takes her hand. "Things are going to get really crazy for a bit, and I'm going to ask you to do some weird things. I promise, when we get time, I'll satisfy that infinite curious brain of yours and answer all your questions, but for now, I need you to do whatever I ask, no questions, no hesitation? Can you do that?"

He feels her tense up for a second, but she makes her decision quickly. She nods.

"Good. Go grab clothes and toiletries and stuff. Enough for a few days, comfortable and inconspicuous, if you can. Any cash on hand you have too. I'm thinking we have three minutes."

"Three minutes until what?"

"Until people start trying to kill us, Bones."

* * *

A/N: Don't worry Castle fans, chapter 2, with your favorite couple, is coming in just a few minutes...


	2. Chapter 2

Rick Castle's body reacts to the bullet before his brain is aware it is there.

He throws himself down. His breath leaves him in a rush as he lands chest first on the carpet. He manages to half-roll, half-flop over onto his side and pin himself hard against a couch. He can't hear anything, as his ears are filled with the rushing sound of his own blood and the cracking of gunshots. He tries to look around the end table, only to have to duck his head back down as a bullet careens overhead, shattering a lamp and raining porcelain down on his head.

"Who are they shooting at?" This comes as a shout from his partner, Detective Kate Beckett, who he can't see, but seems to be behind the recliner in the corner. Even though he's in the middle of a firefight, the interior decorator in his brain notes that the fabric on the recliner doesn't go at all well with the couch.

"Does it matter?" he yells in reply. Fabric criticism can wait until later.

"You, they are shooting at you," comes another voice. Castle recognizes it as the voice of the man who'd been pointing a gun at them, just a few seconds ago. Castle looks up, sees that the man has at least moved his gun from them to the people outside the window.

"How can you tell?"

"We're still alive," Gun-guy replies. Castle shakes his head, not sure what gun-guy means. He tries again to look around the end of the couch. He is able to catch Kate's eye - she is unarmed and tucked into the back of the recliner - but she gives him a small shake of the head. Stay put, she seems to say with her shake.

Screw that, Castle thinks, and starts to crawl towards her. How the hell have they gotten into a gunfight in the living room of a small row house in West Philadelphia? Esposito had sent them to this house under the premise that it held a supposed friend. But neither he nor Kate had gotten much more than a hello out to the small man that had answered the door before a gun was being pointed in their faces by a taller, very haggard, and paranoid looking man. The tall man had led them back into the living room, being talked down unsuccessfully by Esposito's friend the whole time. Castle had spotted another person the room, a tall woman of vague familiarity, right before the front window shattered and they all found themselves in the middle of a siege.

Two more shots came in through the window, one hitting near him, the other ... he can't tell where it has gone, but he doesn't think anyone is hit. He freezes nonetheless, stuck in a no man's land in the middle of the living room. He looks back at the window where the bullets are coming from. Two men - Esposito's fat friend and the tall man he thinks of as gun guy stand on either side of the window, pressed hard against the brickwork. The one on the left, the one they have come to meet, is short, fat, and primly dressed all in black, while the other is tall, trim and disheveled, but both have the same balletic precision as they, in concert, bring their guns up and around the window sill, firing out into the late afternoon air. Castle hears eight shots - four from each man in two short bursts he knows to be a double tap - followed by both men returning to crouched and ready positions behind the bricks.

Castle hears something - human and primal and pained - come from outside, followed by the screeching of car tires, and then nothing, nothing at all, just a silence that could be the end, or could just be a pause.

Sergeant Allan Dwzytowski, the Quartermaster friend of Espo's that they'd come to meet, leans his bulk out and over the sill again, looking into the street in front of his house. "It appears you hit one of em," he says to the tall man opposite him. "They look like they're beatin' a strategic retreat." Gun guy nods, tucking his gun into the back of his waistband.

Castle rolls onto his back. None of this is as fun to live as it is to write about and he is feeling achy and lightheaded.

A tall woman comes to stand over him. He leans forward, wanting to see his girlfriend's face, but while similar, the woman standing over him is definitely not Kate Beckett.

"It appears you've been shot in the left medial deltoid. We should examine that as soon as possible," the woman says in a clinical, detached fashion, as if she's announcing movie times.

Shit, he thinks. I recognize that voice.

Then: I've been shot?

She bends down and starts probing his arm with nothing that resembles a bedside manner. He wants to point that out to her, but he finds that it is getting very hard to think. Besides, where are his manners?

He tilts his head back, so that he can see Kate, who is looking rather pale as she kneels down next to him. "Kate," he says, trying to ignore the slight slur in his speech, "I'd like you to meet Temperance Brennan. She's like me..."

But whatever he was going to say was lost as the blood loss catches up with him, and he passes out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**Sixteen hours before Philadelphia...**

Booth drops Bones hand and runs out of the kitchen. She takes a second to collect herself, and then starts moving too.

What comes next is a whirlwind of activity Brennan thinks she understands, but isn't quite sure. She's had a go-bag for years, so she grabs that instead of packing something new. She takes cash and her revolver from the floor safe in the bedroom, and two minutes later, they are out the front door, which Booth leaves unlocked and open behind him.

They take the Prius instead of the Mercedes when they leave. Brennan guesses this is because the Prius is less conspicuous than the S-Class, though that notion is dissuaded when Booth pulls the car into the driveway of a run-down used-car lot on the north edge of town. He gets out, breaks the lock on the fence gate, and pushes it open. He motions for her to drive in, so she gets out and walks around to the driver's side.

"Park it as far back from the street as you can, see if you can hide the plates up against a wall or another car," Booth says to her. "Take everything of ours, but leave the car key. I'll be right back."

She watches him run across the street to one of those mail-box stores, and then takes the car and does what he asks. She has their stuff - her stuff really - sitting next to her by the parked car when he returns. He's carrying a thick, overstuffed manila envelope and a duffel bag. He doesn't mention the reason for either and per her earlier agreement, she doesn't ask.

She really wants to ask.

He leaves the bag and envelope with her, then goes over to the RV that serves as an office for the lot. She sees a camera hanging from one of the eaves, figures that all of this is on tape for later, just as he breaks one of the windows and then reaches in to jimmy open the door. He disappears inside for a moment and returns with a set of keys. She looks at him, but says nothing.

"I left a couple grand on the desk." She nods, guessing that the envelope must have had cash stuffed in it.

He grabs their bags and walks down the row to a beat up off-yellow Toyota. It's about as bland a car as she's ever seen. He gets in the driver's seat and turns on the car. She slips into the passenger seat. She wonders where Booth, the frugal agent who refuses to jaywalk and haggles $2 hotdogs, has gone.

He stops briefly and gets out of the car to close, but not lock, the gate behind him, and then five minutes later, they are off, heading north, away from the city.

She watches him as he drives, first past Fort Meade and then through Baltimore. It was already late when they'd gotten home from dinner, and all she'd wanted to do was strip down and crawl into bed with him curled around her. Now it's much later still, well into the next day really, and she has no idea how much longer it will all go on. She gets the sense, like the pregnancy, that everything is really just starting.

They drive for almost two hours, Booth's face a mask of concentration the entire time. Brennan sits back in her seat, tries to figure out where they are. They must be near the Delaware border at this point, but it's so dark its hard to tell if they've crossed over already or are about to. She wonders if they are headed to Philadelphia or further, all the way on to New York.

Booth pulls off the road at the next exit and turns into a motel that is visible from the interstate. The place is clean, but it's obvious that its best days are long past. Booth turns off the engine and motions for her to follow him in.

The clerk behind the counter makes no motion towards them when they enter, despite Booth's friendly nod.

"Hey, can we get a room for the night?"

"The two of you?"

"Yeah."

"Sixty bucks. I'll need your credit card."

"I'll give you eighty if I can pay cash."

Brennan goes to tell Booth that she has all of her credit cards, but decides better of it. She doesn't think he's forgotten.

"A hundred."

"Ninety," Booth counters.

"Done. But I still need names."

"Smith."

"And her?"

"Smith. Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

"John and Jane, right?"

"Got it in one."

"Yeah, anyway. Room eight is all yours. It's about halfway down, to your left. You can park in front."

"Thanks. Come on, honey," Booth says, and Brennan stops herself before correcting him. This is obviously a Hank and Wanda Moosejaw-type of situation. If they are undercover, why is he making it so obvious?

Booth drives down the row, but he goes past room 8 and around the corner, instead parking the car behind the motel, away from the interstate.

"When we get to the room, I want you to mess it up a bit, sit on the bed, whatever, but don't leave anything behind," he says as they walk to the room. He unlocks the door and drops his bag just inside the frame. She contemplates the space for a second, and then goes into the bathroom. She throws a tissue into the trash, then shuffles around some of the things on the counter. The motel room is ugly and old, but at least it's clean. She sits on the bed just in time to see Booth finish writing something on the pad of paper by the phone, and then rips the top page of the pad.

"Okay, let's go," he says.

He closes the door behind them, and then goes two rooms over to room 10. There are no cars parked in the spot in front, and he peeks inside the window to confirm the room is empty before picking the lock. He holds the door for her.

"Do we mess up this room too?" she asks.

"No, now we wait."

"Then can we talk about what is going on now?"

"In a bit. But last thing for now - I need you to take the SIM cards out of our phones, and then turn them off."

"They've been off. I turned them off hours ago."

"I know, but I need the SIMs out now too."

She does what he asks, then decides to lay down. Booth has been acting weird, but she supposes all of the things he's been doing make sense if you want to hide. But still, they could have been more careful. The cameras at the car lot, the fact that they still have their phones, the weird back and forth Booth did with the clerk - she's not an expert, but she'd bet they could have done a better job than they have.

But she decides to give him a few more hours before calling him on it. It is nearly four in the morning and she has already had a busy few days. She could just close her eyes for a few minutes, think about the rest...

She hears noises and sits up. Booth has somehow moved across the room to sit on a chair, and she realizes she must have fallen asleep. He is sitting by the window, his head propped against the wall so that he can see out the slight crack between the window and the shade. The lights are off.

"Booth..."

"Shhh," he says, with a finger to his lips. She stops talking and stills, wondering what he is seeing.

"They're here."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**Six hours before Philadelphia...**

Kate Beckett has barely gotten her front door open when Rick pounces, pushing his hips hard into hers and using his momentum to guide them into her apartment. They collapse onto the foyer carpet, a tangle of lips and limbs.

"I should warn you," he says, in between moving from her mouth to her neck, "that we're not going to be able to remain discreet if you grab my crotch in the station again."

"I didn't hear you complaining then."

"I'm not complaining now. Just stating." One hand comes off the carpet to snake under her jacket.

"State less. Or later, just ... no talking. And kick the door shut please."

He does as she has asked, and then slowly crawls his way back up her body as she lays on the floor. She arches her back in what he hopes is anticipation. A month of this, he thinks. A month without work, without mothers and daughters, without chapter deadlines...

Without clothes...

But as he smiles at that thought and reaches for her mouth, she turns away and pushes off of him and the floor. She is standing, moving frantically, before he's quite gathers that she's left.

"Kate, what?"

"Someone's been here, Castle."

He turns and props himself on an elbow to look around. She is right - the room had been ransacked. Castle gets to his feet as Kate goes into the bedroom.

Unlike the modern opulence of his place, Kate's apartment tends towards organized clutter. Whomever has broken in has used this fact to maximum effect. It appears that their goal was less towards theft and more towards creating as much chaos and damage as possible. Castle looks around at the sliced couch cushions, a broken coffee table, a scattered spice rack. He picks a black object up off the floor - the upper half of a stuffed raven lays mangled in his hand.

"It's the same in the bedroom," Kate says, walking back to him.

"What did they take? Can you tell?"

"Nothing. It's like they just destroyed ... oh!"

She walks over to her window, throws open the shutters. The window is bare - her ersatz murderboard gone.

"Bracken," she says, the word coming out like a swear.

"I guess he didn't take the deal then," he says, wincing before it is all the way out of his mouth. Kate gives him a reproachful look, but doesn't comment.

"He must've known I was bluffing."

"Hmmm..."

"What, Castle?"

"Nothing."

"No," she says, hands on hips, "spit it out."

"What if he didn't? What if he just didn't care?"

"That doesn't make any sense. The man is a Senator. He's got way too much to lose."

"Does he? I mean... what if he knew all along that we couldn't touch him?"

She goes to protest again, so he raises his hand to stop her. "Think about it, Kate. The Captain and Smith had this information for years, and they didn't do anything with it. Maybe because they knew it wasn't enough."

"They sat on it to keep Roy's family safe, to keep me safe."

"Then maybe they had enough at one point. Maybe Bracken does the deal to keep them out of his hair, and then he works behind the scenes to remove the foundation out from under them. Coonan and Lockwood and Roy and Smith are all gone. He left us alone for a year. I'm guessing he used that time to become untouchable," he says the last in a rush, realizing as he says it that he's been thinking it for a few days. Why take the deal and spend a year leaving them alone to just magically come after them again without prompting? Something has changed, they just don't know what yet.

"So I'm dead, that's what you're saying."

Castle starts and stops. He realizes that's exactly what he's said, but he doesn't know an answer that backs off the essential fact, either for him or her. So he says nothing. She stares at him for a moment and he stares back, knowing there are no answers on his face. After a moment, she blows out a short breath and shrugs.

He watches her wander through her apartment for a moment, randomly toeing things she'd once owned but are now junk.

"We need to get you out of here, Kate."

"And go where, Castle?"

"My place."

"No."

"You can't stay here."

"I'm not making you a target too, which is what would happen if we went to your place."

"I'm already a target if you are. Bracken's shown tha..."

"Then your mother," she interrupts. "Alexis. I'm not making them targets."

"They're," he starts to say and stops. Alexis and his mother are in Europe for the month. But will that be enough? He has no idea what kind of timeframe they are dealing with, now.

"Right," she says, watching his internal dialogue. "I'm going to call the boys ..." she drifts off. They both know, with their most recent case, the boys are no longer a single entity.

"I'll call Ryan, you call Espo," he says, to fill the hole.

"Yeah. Yeah," she says, and pulls her phone from her pocket. He watchs her for a second, then calls Kevin Ryan at the station. Ryan has a number of questions that Castle can't answer, and so they end the call both unsatisfied. He then calls his mother, whom he also really can't tell anything, but when he suggests that his two redheads stay in Europe an extra few weeks, his mother agrees with a minimum of fuss. She is getting used to his dangerous lifestyle, he realizes.

He can't say that is a good thing.

He finds Kate in her bedroom after his calls, packing a bag with some clothes.

"Got Ryan up to speed," he says. "At least, as much as I could." He looks at her open gun safe, embedded in the wall next to her bed. It's open and empty.

"They broke that open too, got my personal piece."

He has no answer for that. "I told my mother to stay out of town for a few extra days too."

"If they want us, Castle ... I can't think that a few extra days is going to matter much."

"It might."

She pushes past him and grabs more clothes from the wardrobe. There is too much to talk about and nothing at all, so he keeps quiet, for once.

"Espo wants us to go visit a friend of his," she said finally, "Some military friend named Dwzytowski. Says it's the guy that recruited him into the army."

"Maddox was military."

"I mentioned that. Espo doesn't think he and his friend ever ran in the same circles. Said this guy was a quartermaster."

"Quartermaster?"

"The guy who makes sure the unit has enough cheese slices and socks and stuff," she replies, and he can tell by the way she says it that she is quoting Espo. "He has a place outside of Philly. Espo thinks ... might be able to give us a place to stay for a day or two, get our bearings, build a plan."

Friend of a friend of a friend, deep out of town... Castle can see how it might be safe, might be at least an illusion of safe, for a day or two. It doesn't seem the greatest plan, but he can't help but notice that she is making the plan for both of them, not just running off on her own. He'll take a bad plan that includes both of them over watching her run out the door on her own any day.

"Then let's go," he says.

Kate lifts her bag in agreement, and he follows her out the door and back into the living room. She freezes there and he almost walks into her. He looks over her shoulder - she is staring at her kitchen counter. The second half of the message to them is resting there.

Two long thin bullets, still in their cartridges, are standing on their tails in the center of the counter, separated by a few inches of clear space from the flotsam that covers the rest of the room. Two bullets. A new message.

Bracken is coming for both of them.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: I guess I forgot to put the standard non-ownership disclaimer here. And here y'all were, thinking I owned this stuff..._

* * *

**Chapter 5**

**Thirteen hours before Philadelphia...**

Booth watches as two small guys break into room 8. The noise wakes Bones up, but he quiets her down quickly. He can hear the two guys ransacking the room. He looks at his watch - three and a half hours - these guys aren't that good. Obviously, Broadsky is using the B team right now.

That's fine by Booth.

The guys are slow, but not completely without training, and so they find the pad by the phone quickly enough. Three minutes later, the first one comes back out the door, looks slowly up and down the row. His eyes track past Booth's head and Booth stifles the urge to move. In the dark of the room, his quick motion would be easier to see than if he just stays in sight but motionless. Besides, only a small sliver of his face is visible, at most. The guys walks a few steps towards Booth, turns and looks in room 9. Seeing nothing, the goon leans back up, starts further towards room 10.

Before he gets there, the other guy, the littler of the two, comes outside again.

"Come on, they already left," he says to his partner. The bigger guy turns away from room 10 before looking in the window.

Booth watches them walk back to the portcullis and get in their car. He watches them pull out and head up to the on-ramp to get back on 95, back towards Baltimore. They are definitely the B team.

He can live with that.

It's not until they are on the interstate that he breathes a sigh of relief. He knows what he's dealing with now, and one last job - well, two last jobs, and then he can get some sleep. Then the real work begins.

"They are gone. We're safe for awhile. Can you hand me the phones?" he asks Bones.

Bones nods and gives him his FBI issue phone as well as her Jeffersonian iPhone.

He flips them open, puts the SIM cards back in and powers them up. As the phones' lights come on, he thinks of something.

"Know how to wipe your data off this thing, Bones?"

"Enter the password wrong five times."

"I'll be right back, and then we can sleep or talk or whatever..."

He leaves the room and walks across the lot, careful to stay out of the sightline of the clerk's office, and goes across the access road until he's in the grass near the on-ramp towards New York. He enters gibberish into Bones' phone a few times until it pops up an alert that her data is gone, and then does the same with his own phone. Then he crouches, hidden in the grass, and waits.

Ten minutes later, a semi-tractor trailer pulls out of the diner next door to the motel and pulls to a stop, ready to turn onto the interstate. Booth jumps up and crab walks over to the trailer on the far side from the driver. The trailer ends in a metal lip that acts as a step and bumper, made of corrugated steel on three sides, with the side facing the trailer left open. Booth places the phones into the little shelf that the open wall provides just as the rig powers up and turns onto the onramp. He watches the eighteen wheeler, with its new cargo of two smartphones, get up to speed and disappear north into the night.

He is very tired. He hopes his newly pregnant girlfriend is asleep when he gets back to the room, so that he can sleep too, rather than answer her inevitable twenty questions. Plus, he needs her to sleep - he's still, above all else, worried about the baby.

* * *

"I assume I am allowed to ask about last night's activities now?" Bones asks over breakfast the next morning. She had been asleep when he got back to the room, so he'd removed her shoes and watch, and tucked them both under the comforter. He thought it weird - they had still slept together more on the road, either undercover or on the run, then they had as an actual couple. Maybe it wasn't that weird - they'd only been dating for three weeks. Most couples didn't have to think about a baby before they worked out a first date.

"I'm surprised you didn't ask before now," he replies, chewing some bacon. The little roadside diner is surprisingly decent, and they are both famished after their long night and short sleep.

"I have a number of questions, and I am finding it difficult to find the proper hierarchy in which to delve into them."

"Well, let's start this way, Bones - I once told you that, if you asked, I would tell you about my past. I think it's finally time to ask."

"I know what you did."

"No, not enough. There's more."

"Booth, I don't care about what you did in the military. It does not affect the conceptualization I have of you now."

"I'm glad, but," he says with a sigh. He'd planned on this going according to some script, so that it would get him in the right frame of mind. She's changing the script. "I told you I went AWOL to be there for Parker's birth, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, afterwards... I'm sitting in the brig and this Colonel shows up. He says he can make my charges go away and promote me at the same time, if I'm willing to put my skills to use in a particular way. That's the stupid term he used. And I knew better, but I was still gambling too much, worried about how I'd take care of Parker, facing an Article 32 … so I agreed."

He takes a breath and a sip of coffee.

"The real name for the team was … doesn't matter. We called it The Program. That's where I met Broadsky for the first time."

"I thought you said you didn't know Broadsky?"

"Kinda hard to admit knowing him while not admitting to the existence of a super secret division of the army," he responds, sarcastically. She doesn't react, much, just a tightening around the eyes, but it's enough for him to back off. He doesn't need to take things out on her.

He gives her a small smile of apology, then he starts again, calmer.

"I'd known about him, but never met him until he was my training officer. For eighteen months I did wetwork - not just shooting, but other assassinations, as well as evidence planting, specialized demolitions … stuff that doesn't fall under the Geneva convention."

He stares at his coffee. He doesn't want to look at her - whether she's sympathetic or disgusted or just clinical - it won't matter. He just doesn't want to have to look at himself in her eyes.

"Tag was a training exercise. Infiltration is important, but for a lot of our missions, exfiltration was more important. We had to be able to get out without leaving a sign. Broadsky taught me how to play tag. Last night was a test - would I play along, and how good would I be?"

"We got away, so obviously you were good enough."

"No, we should have been caught, and caught earlier. Broadsky didn't come after us himself. I'm not sure why. I left enough clues that he'd have gotten to that motel room in an hour."

"That's why you didn't worry about the cameras at the car lot. You were testing our adversaries capabilities."

"Yeah, Bones. Bigger question is … which of the clues I left afterwards will they follow? I'm just hoping they don't have the manpower to follow both."

"And if Broadsky does?"

"Then we're facing a conspiracy, not just a guy gone whacko."

"When will we know?"

"Well, I wrote a note that hinted we were going to the FBI offices in Pittsburgh. I sent our phones on a long hauler to, most likely, Boston. I'll get Hacker to see where people turn up, and then we'll know. Bigger problem though. I have a hidey hole that we'd normally be able to go to, but if we're gonna take on Broadsky and whatever power he's got behind him, we're gonna need access to the team, to our networks. A cabin in the middle of nowhere ain't gonna help us. We need somewhere else."

Bones leans down, takes a bite of fruit salad. Booth recognizes the look on her face - her thinking look - and shuts up. Booth takes stock while sipping on his coffee. The whole frame of this is looking bigger than he'd ever thought. Broadsky couldn't have gotten out of Leavenworth without help, and reasonably powerful help at that, considering how fast it all went down. He would have needed someone to plant the note in Bones' apartment, and Booth doubts that came from the B team, considering that someone have to been watching them for a few days without Booth noticing, and the B team isn't good enough for that. So that implies two teams, which worries Booth even more, since that makes it obvious that this little game of Tag isn't meant to be the main offensive, but some feint in a larger game.

Booth's head starts to hurt. He wonders if they can find Max, get his help. The man did manage to stay hidden for decades.

"I have an idea, Booth."

"Someplace for us to go?"

"Maybe not directly, but I have a friend who has the resources to help us out."

"Somehow I'm thinking that it is unlikely anyone with _resources _is going to be willing to take us in and help us take on a criminal conspiracy. Unless it's Hodgins, and, trust me, Broadsky knows about Hodgins."

"No, of course not, Booth. I speak to Dr. Hodgins daily. And trust me, my friend will help. I am an excellent judge of character."

Booth blew a breath out his nose. "I've got one place I want to go first. A guy who might be able to help us for a day or two. After that, if there is an after, then we go to your friend. Where is he, anyway?"

"New York."

Booth nodded. At the least, maybe, he'd get some Gray's Papaya before he died.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: Philadelphia**

Booth watches as Bones and the other woman tend to the guy on the floor. Bones has the situation well in hand, and Dizzy seems to be fine with the two latecomers presence, so Booth goes back to checking out the window.

"What do you think, Diz? They didn't seem professional."

"Doubt they were, Seel. This is West Philly. The Fresh Prince might have got out, but we still got a decent number of bangers in the neighborhood."

"Why would bangers be shooting at us?"

"Not you necessarily. Me. They all know I help out with kids in the neighborhood, try to get 'em 'fore the gangs do. Both you and Detective Beckett over there scream cop. Pre-emptive strike is what I'm guessing."

At hearing the name 'Detective Beckett,' the tall woman looks up, makes eye contact, and then returns to her wounded partner. Booth grimaces for a second - so he'd been pointing his gun at a cop. Great.

After shaking their tail in Maryland, Booth had decided he needed intel in addition to a safe haven, so they'd spent the day driving to Philadelphia and the home of Sgt. Stephen "Dizzy" Dwzytowski, another ex-member of The Program, and one who might have his ears closer to the ground than Booth. But two minutes after they showed up at his door, the tall woman and the overly well-dressed manboy had shown up, quickly followed by gunfire. Booth took all that as fair reason to be a bit paranoid.

Still - not the best way to get off on a professional footing.

"Are those guys coming back?" She - Detective Beckett apparently - asks.

"I don't think so. Seeley here got one of 'em before they peeled out in a hurry. How's your boy?"

She looks back at Bones and the guy on the floor. "Your..." she starts, and looks from Brennan to Booth.

"...partner … Dr. Temperance Brennan..." Booth supplies.

"Your Doctor Brennan says it's a through and through. He's had worse, but we've had a rough few days. We need a place … a bed … or something where we can work on him?"

Dizzy jumps at that. "Come on little lady, I gotta guest room back here," he says, leading them towards the back. "Seel', I think we're on liftin' duty."

At Bones' direction, he gets the shoulders and Dizzy the feet, and together they haul Detective Beckett's partner back to the twin bed in the guest room. After he is deposited and Bones starts dressing his wounds, Booth decides it is time to get some answers.

"Okay, so who are you two?"

"I could ask the same," Detective Beckett replies, but is interrupted by Bones.

"This is Richard Castle. He's an author. He works with Detective Beckett at the NYPD."

"You're a fan," Beckett says with resignation.

"Richard and I share the same movie agent," Bones says, "Booth, hand me that pair of scissors."

Booth does as she's asked, and seeing the look of confusion on Beckett's face, he continues, "Bones … Dr. Brennan ... here is an author too."

"Oh, I thought I recognized … you write the Kathy Reichs books."

"I would not categorize them thusly, but yes, you are essentially correct. And this is my partner, Special Agent Seeley Booth of the FBI. I mean my work partner. He's my sexual partner as well, but I suspect you are more concerned with our professional relationship at this juncture."

Booth clamps down on his desire to shush Bones. He knew what he was getting into when he started sleeping with her, and besides, she is busy trying to sew the author's arm back together. And given the way the Detective is holding Richard's hand, he suspects the more than partners situation isn't all that foreign to them either. Not that that helps him figure out how to get control of the situation again.

"Not a bad little field dressing, little lady, but I think we should call the cops and..."

"No!" Booth says immediately, realizing a split second later that Bones, the Detective, and even the author have all chimed in with him.

"I'm guessin' that's a no, then. Good to see you awake, Mr. Castle."

"Ugh, I passed out?"

"You were shot in the shoulder," Beckett answers him. "It was a clean shot, in and out."

"A through and through? Awesome, I always wanted one of those."

"Yeah, well, when it aches like hell tomorrow, you may change your mind," Beckett says. Booth wonders if he is the only one who sees her eyeroll.

"Bracken?" Richard asks, sitting up. Booth wonders what the hell that means.

"Some local gangbangers, it seems, with a grudge against Sergeant Dwzytowski."

"Well, it's Father Dwzytowski now, though most people still call me Dizzy, and it ain't so much a grudge against me … well, nevermind. Whatever troubles you're bringing with you, those guys ain't part of it."

Richard rubs his head. "How the hell did we get in a situation where we need notecards to keep track of all the people shooting at us?"

Booth says nothing, but he has to agree. "More importantly, what the hell trouble did you bring down on us?" He asks instead.

"Seel... calm the hell down. They're my guests, same as you."

Booth grits his teeth. Being chased by an expert sniper should allow for some latitude in politeness. But Dizzy, if he sees Booth's expression, doesn't care.

"Mr. Castle, are you up to joining us in the kitchen? If we're headed for the double round of storytime that I'm expectin', I'm betting we could all use a stiff cup of coffee."

"Am I going to get shot at again if I move?" Booth notices that Castle is directing the question at him, but it is Bones who answers.

"Sorry Richard, we've had a difficult twenty four hours. Booth won't actually shoot someone unless they require shooting."

Booth wonders if he and Bones have the same requirements when it comes to shooting someone before remembering the time she shot him. He shakes off the thought. Dizz is right; it is time for coffee.

* * *

**A/N: **Sorry for the shorter update. I'm getting close to having this whole thing plotted at least...


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

**Philadelphia**

* * *

Booth gravitates towards Beckett when they get to the kitchen. Bones and Castle almost immediately started playing some sort of rich author catch-up game he didn't want to be a part of, and Dizz is going through cabinets doing frantic Dizz-type of things. That leaves the cop.

"Sorry about the gun, earlier," he says to the Detective. She is the tallest woman he can remember being around, even beating Bones by a few inches. He looks down - four-inch heels probably account for a lot of the extra height. He wonders if he can talk Bones into shoes like that. After the pregnancy that is. He shakes his head. He's in the middle of a war and he's thinking about sexual liaisons a year in the future.

"It's fine. If I had a piece, I'd have had it out the moment we saw you too. At least those two know each other," she replies, tilting her head at Bones and Castle.

"Yeah, I don't even want to think about how. So … law enforcement partnered with an author?"

"You too, apparently. How'd that happen?"

He blew out a quick breath. "Hated each other at first, but were stuck together. Took awhile, but found a way to become partners. Then friends." He stops, remembering what Bones had said earlier. "Then something more," he admits. He is surprised when she chuckles. She doesn't seem like a chuckler.

"What?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says with a coy look, "just sounds familiar, is all."

He nods, remembering the way she held Castle's hand, ten minutes earlier. He doesn't need more than that. This isn't one of those lady shows they have on during the day, and feelings time needs to get over in a hurry. "And how do you know, Dizz?"

"We needed a place … away from New York. Guy on my team is ex-military, thought Sergeant Dwzytowski might be able to help us."

"You guys on the run from something?"

Dizz interrupts then, "You're jumping the gun, Seel'. Sit everyone."

* * *

"So, who first?" Dizz asks with a lazy smile. Of all of them, he's obviously the only one even slightly amused by any of this. Well, Booth amends, Castle seems to have a dumb smirk on his face too. But he suspects that's a common occurrence.

Booth has no great need to explain anything to anyone except Dizzy, so he just leans back in his chair. Castle and Bones share a look, like they've already started talking, and then Castle turns to Kate. By silent committee, it appears it's her job to go first.

Kate takes a deep breath and starts talking. Booth can immediately tell that she hates story-time about as much as he does. He leans in; he doesn't need this to be any harder for any of them than it already is.

"Back in the early '90s, there was a group of crooked cops that started kidnapping guys from the Five Families. They'd hold them for ransom - keep them off the streets for a few days and bleed some cash out of the mafia. But, one kidnapping went bad and an undercover cop died. It got pinned on the mafia and the enforcer went to jail."

She takes another breath. "About a decade later, my mother got the guy's case on appeal. She was a lawyer. She uncovered the actions of the cops, but there had been someone else, a man everyone called The Dragon. He'd found out about the cops extracirricular activities and had been blackmailing them. To keep the blackmailing hidden, he had my mother killed. Stabbed to death by a professional assassin in an alley in Washington Heights to look like a mugging."

She rings her hands together. Castle makes a move to reach out to her, but she shrugs him off. Not unkindly, Booth notices, just … trying to stay focused.

"Years later, I found her killer, but he died trying to escape custody. We kept at it, but The Dragon, he took out the cops, he killed our captain, he tried to have me killed. A few days ago, we caught a case... it was a kid who'd been hired to steal information from our former captain's house. Information that would lead us to The Dragon."

"We couldn't … my Captain … my old Captain, he was involved, years ago, but I couldn't tell our new Captain that, so I had to go against orders to pursue things. But it didn't matter. The guy … he was too good for me, threw me off a building. Left me for dead."

Castle reaches for her again, which she doesn't move to accept, but she doesn't pull away either. "Afterwards, he... Maddox, went after a friend of the Captain's."

Booth tries to school his reactions, but the name Maddox, of course, strikes a chord, especially now. Dizzy flinches next to him. It's not enough for Bones or Beckett to notice, but he sees that Castle has picked up their reaction. But Kate continues before the author can question it.

"The Captain's friend... he had information that would reveal The Dragon. In trying to stop Maddox, the information was blown up. End of Maddox, but the end of our trail too. Except, we were able to piece a bit of it back... not a lot, but a bank account. A bank account that belonged to The Dragon and paid for my mother's killer. We found the account, and then we found The Dragon."

"Who was it," Bones asks.

"William Bracken."

They aren't in the circles exactly, but both Booth and Brennan deal with Capitol Hill enough know who Bracken is. Dizzy, however, does not. He looks confused.

"Should that mean sometin'?"

"He's a Senator," Booth answers before Kate can.

"A Senator that got to be a Senator by using blackmail money to fuel his rise. I confronted him, told him what we knew. Told him we'd keep quiet if he backed off. Our lives for his career. We thought he agreed."

"But he didn't," Booth says.

"He left us these," Castle says, pulling two bullets from his pocket. Booth picks up one, and Dizzy the other. The words start coming out of Booth without thought - fueled by a lifetime of training.

"Sierra MatchKing Boat Tail hollow points. Hand loaded - 175 grain... hunter's load, for decent-size game at long distances. They belong to a pro."

"Guy's not as good as he thinks though," Dizzy says. He points to the edge of the cartridge.

"No," Booth agrees. "Not top tier, not as a shooter or hand loader, certainly. But good enough for almost any job and better than most."

"It's not Maddox," Kate says, "since he's dead. But Bracken seems to have a supply of these guys."

"Maddox ain't his real name," Dizzy says.

"No... it was Cedric Marks. How did you know that?"

"If Booth's here for the reasons I'm guessing... maybe that's his story to tell."

"You know why we're here?"

"Seel', buddy, I known you fifteen years and I ain't seen you in ten. And hell, you take away the good lord, we only got one thing left in common. And I don't think yer here for confessional."

Booth blew a raspberry. He hates this - this need to break protocols, even if he'd already once just hours ago with Bones. But they need allies and information. And as he once told Bones … share a little of yourself to get a little back.

"We knew Maddox was a fake name 'cause I was Cole Maddox, once," Booth says, finally.

"What?"

It is Dizzy that answers, "People always think that cover identities are so easy to pull together. Too much TV, I guess. But they are a pain, so we only really ever developed a few truly deep covers. For most of the times, we had a big collection of light cover identities that we used when we needed. Cole Maddox was one of them. I can still remember a lot of them."

"Carl Foster," Booth chimes in.

"Wallace Morrison," Dizzy replied.

"Derek Rathbone, Giovanni Di Bruno..."

"... James Matthews, Hal Lockwood, Mark Kurlansky..."

"Did you say Hal Lockwood?" Castle cuts in just as Kate does the same. "Did you say Derek Rathbone?"

Dizzy and Booth look at each other. "Yeah? Why?"

"A guy calling himself Hal Lockwood was sent after one of the crooked cops. He kidnapped some of our guys and eventually killed our Captain."

"And Rathbone was the name Coonan... the guy that killed Kate's mom ... gave us to throw us off the scent."

"I think that seals it," Dizzy says. "Whatever you all are tangled up in, it's connected to The Program somehow."

"The Program?"

"As I was saying," Booth interrupts. "I was Cole Maddox. Without going into details … " Booth pauses. If Castle and Beckett are being shot at by these guys, they deserve to know. And since the same guys are shooting at him, and at Bones … well... "to hell with it. What I'm going to tell you … it's not strictly legal for you to know. Understand?"

He watches for the nods, and continues, "Back about the time of Gulf 1, the U.S. had a bit of a problem, which was they had a whole range of secret forces that weren't so secret anymore."

"That's the problem when you name stuff Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 an' shit… gets people's imagination goin'..." Dizzy chimes in.

"Yeah, whatever. So, this hotshot half-bird named Martinez gets assigned to create a new group. I guess he thought like Father Dizz. He named it the Operational Supply Research Efficiencies Group, or OSREG for short."

"He made you sound like a bunch of paper pushers," Kate says.

"Efficiency experts, basically. Make even the most die-hard bean-counting major's eyes roll back in his head," Booth finishes, noticing he's starting to adopt the laconic way of speaking he'd developed back at Benning. It was coming either from reminicense or from listening to Dizz.

"Anyway, we just called ourselves 'The Program.' Our real job was all the stuff … well, all the bad stuff any government has to do in war and then lie about in peacetime. I was a member. The guy that was hunting you, Cedric Marks... he was a member, even if I never knew him. Dizz here was sort of a member."

"The only Quartermaster in an organization that was full of 'em, supposedly..."

"You were the guy that could get people things," Castle chimes in.

"Yup, just like Morgan Freeman, but prettier."

"Anyway. It sounds like the guys who are after you are tied to The Program, or ex-Program, or something. So is the guy who is after us. Ex-Master Sergeant turned Hostage Rescue guy by the name of Jacob Broadsky. Last night..."

"Broadsky's takin' shots at you?" Dizz interrupts.

"Twice now, in between some sort of vigiliante killing spree. We caught him, but right after we dumped him in Leavenworth, he killed two guys and broke out."

"Like Lockwood did with McAllister," Kate says, looking at Castle. Castle nods, "Same training, same tactics, I guess."

Booth nods, semi-happy to note that Castle seems to have a bit of a brain behind the flippancy.

"Probably. Last night he challenged us to a game of Tag."

"Wait," Castle interrupts, "Why do I know the name Broadsky?"

"Well, if this Marks guy and whoever was calling themselves Lockwood are after you..."

"No," Castle says, "not that." He shakes his head, like it might loosen a lost memory.

"Something through Smith?" Kate asks.

"No … " Castle looks over at Brennan, "Oh! The Gravedigger! He was the guy who shot her head off, wasn't he?"

"You know about Taffet … The Gravedigger?"

Castle looks sheepish. "I … ah … followed the case for a few years. Thought I could … maybe pattern a villain after him … her … but then she came after Temperance and it hit too close to … anyway, I dropped it, but I still paid attention to the news around her."

"Well, you're right. That's how you know him. He's the one who shot her."

"Why?" Castle asks.

"What do you mean, why?"

"I mean why? The news said he was some sort of vigilante trying to punish the wicked... but if you're doing that, wouldn't you shoot people who got away with things? She was already going to spend her life in jail."

"You're assuming his methods are sane," Bones says, "though I am not an expert on motive, we have often found that the motives of criminals are not logical."

"Sure, maybe not to us... but they usually make sense to the criminal," Castle says. "But even if the whole avenging angel thing makes sense … why you, Agent Booth? Why the two inmates in Leavenworth?"

"I don't know, Castle," Booth says, trying out the author's name. It sounds like 'asshole' to Booth, which he's fine with. "Truth is, you're right. It doesn't make sense. Just like your Senator making a deal with you and then deciding to shoot you anyway."

"What if Broadsky feels guilty about The Program? He's hunting down those people that share his guilt..."

"Which wouldn't include The Gravedigger person or Bracken, I'm guessing," Kate says.

"Actually, we don't even know that Bracken and your thing are connected."

"No," Booth says, "we don't. But if they aren't, it seems a hell of an odd coincidence. We're not talking about 1000s of guys... The Program only had sixteen line guys at a time, plus four staff. Martinez supposedly disbanded it in like '04... Maybe you're talking about a hundred guys total. What are the odds that so many of them would crawl out of the woodwork now, and it not be connected at all?"

"I don't think those odds can be … oh, it was a rhetorical question," Bones says. "Yes, I would think it unlikely as well. But we have no evidence one way or the other."

"No," Kate says. "We don't. Bracken was an Assistant District Attorney at the time of the first Gulf War, and a Congressman by the time your team disbanded. How could he even be connected?"

"I don't know, but I know who would."

"Who?"

"Bracken."

"So, what? Are you suggesting we go ask him?"

Booth thinks about it for a second, old pathways in his brain starting to fire again for the first time in years. He can see it all laid out in his head immediately.

"Yes," he says, "that's exactly what I'm suggesting." And then, for the rest of the team, he lays out his plan.

* * *

**A/N: Sorry for all the talky-talky. We'll get back to our regularly scheduled action presently...**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

**Outside Trenton, NJ...**

* * *

The three hour drive back to New York from West Philadelphia is tedious even when the car being driven is a $180,000 Mercedes. Booth, sitting behind Beckett in the backseat, figures he can't make it more tedious, so he decides to get another chore over with.

He decides to call Hacker.

Dizzy had three burner phones that Booth took with him when they left, so Booth pulls out one and breaks it out of the clamshell. Hacker's line is surely being monitored, but if he keeps the call short enough, the call will only track back to a little bit of nowhere outside of Trenton.

"Hacker."

"It's Booth."

"Booth... I was worried when you didn't call... Is Temperance with you?"

"Yeah, we're fine, so far. Look, any more word on Broadsky?"

"We got the names of the two inmates Broadsky killed … Charlie Anders and Samuel Easton. No word yet on why Broadsky might have gone after them. The DOJ won't even be straight with us on why they were there, but I'm still working on it. He also has a guard, we think, who left with him. Juan De Arroz hasn't been seen since the break."

Booth knows both Anders and De Arroz. Anders, he remembers, had been a pretty decent kid and an excellent specialist who spotted for Booth, a few times in Kosovo. De Arroz he never liked. He keeps all of this to himself though.

"There's more, Booth. Last night, there was a breakin at the Jeffersonian."

"What did they take?" Bones asks. Booth had thought she was asleep.

"Temperance, good to hear you are okay. We don't know yet. Your Dr. Saroyan is trying to take inventory. They appeared to be principally interested in your office and the … what do you call it? Where you store all the skeletons?"

"Bone Storage..." Bones says, just as Booth chimes in with, "Limbo."

"Yes, that. Dr. Saroyan doesn't believe anything was taken from there, but she has several interns checking the cataloged records now. But I think we need to discuss bringing you both back into protective custody again..."

"No," Booth says, "I'm sorry … Director … as bad as this is, it'll be worse if we don't play by Broadsky's rules. We'll contact you in another twenty-four hours."

"Agent Booth, I sympathize with you, but you are not …" Whatever else Hacker has to say is lost when Booth kills the connection. He immediately dials a second number.

"Hello?"

"Marigold," Booth says.

"Tarot," Hodgins replies. "Good to hear from you man, you had us worried."

"Sorry, Hodgins, couldn't be helped. Is everything in place?"

"Yeah man, all primary protocols were in place in fifteen minutes. But our secondary protocols, including the Jeffersonian..."

"I heard, from Hacker. Doesn't matter. Can you open sites 32 and 34 for me?"

"Sure … soon as this call ends. Be ready for you in an hour, that okay?"

"Yeah. Hodgins … I need your wife. I know its not a good time, but …"

"Come on, Booth. She's going out of her mind. If she knows she can help and we don't let her? Hold on..."

Booth looks up at Castle and Beckett, who are quietly listening to the speakerphone, but haven't commented.

"Booth! Are you and Brennan okay?"

"We're fine, Angela," Bones interjects. "Are you safe?"

"Jack's got us all jumping through crazy hoops and procedures, but with you guys gone, and with Vincent … I'm just worried."

"We'll be okay, Angela," Booth says, "but I need something, and you're the only person I know who can..."

"As much as I'd normally love the flattery, Booth, let's just..."

"I need you to hunt through military records, find what assignment the following people have in common..." he waits for her to be ready for notes … "Jacob Broadsky, Eric Leisenger, Samuel Easton, Charlie Anders, Juan De Arroz, Benny Winkler, me, and William Bracken. I need to find how we're all connected, and who else might be involved."

"You think this ties to one of your assignments?" Bones asks.

"I don't know," Booth says, "just that we need information. But Angela, I'll warn you... this is going to be like hunting hay in a haystack. There won't be any direct record. It's gonna be something obscure … oddball travel records or TDY's at the same time. BS assignments that are all near each other, but not together. The guys in charge of hiding all of us … they didn't even like it if you could figure out how many socks were being ordered for us."

"Yeah, I got it, Booth. You just keep you and Bren safe, okay?"

"I will, Angela. I promise."

"Brennan, sweetie... love you. Be safe, okay?"

"Of course, Angela, of course."

Booth kills the connection. He dials one last number. Once it is connected, he rolls down the window and throws the phone out past the shoulder, into high grasses off the highway. Track that, Broadsky, he thinks as he rolls up the window.

"The time is now 5:38 … The time is now 5:38..." the voice says through the phone, laying by the side of the road.

* * *

**A/N: Sorry, one last extra interlude was necessary... Action to resume presently...**


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: **I own pie. Not that that has any relation to this story. But I don't own anything with respect to this story, so...

* * *

Chapter 9

New York

Castle stands in the center of the ballroom, dressed to the nines in a tux, his beautiful date on his arm. He leans over to whisper in her ear, and then leaves her to go get some drinks.

Castle has always thought he'd want to be in the center of a Derrick Storm novel. Now that he is, all he wants to do was go home and eat ice cream. Not a very super-spy thought, but he doesn't feel much like a super-spy, even with the tuxedo. Though he doesn't mind the looks he gets from the women in the ballroom that could pass for Bond girls. Though, why should he care? He's dating a Bond girl. Sleeping with a Bond girl. Something... with a Bond girl. He really wishes that this thing with Bracken, the trying not to get dead thing, would go away so he can settle out what he really is with his Bond girl.

He grabs two glasses of champagne, even though his date isn't drinking. Neither will he, for that matter, but illusions need to be maintained. He casually looks around the room at the rest of the New York Glitterati. To the outside observer, he hopes he looks like a man looking for friends, not a man casing the place for security.

In the end, just "talking to Bracken" isn't going to be quite as simple as Booth had implied.

The four of them - Castle, Beckett, Booth and Brennan - had sat around Dizzy's kitchen as he made them dinner and they worked out a plan. Luckily, they'd found that Bracken had a fundraiser the next night, run by some environmental group that otherwise seemed a bit like a political liability.

"That means he actually cares about it," Dizzy had said, "which is good - means he won't blow it off."

As a black-tie event, and with Bracken sure to spot Beckett the minute she walked in, it was quickly decided that Castle and Brennan should go instead. The five of them had hoped that Brennan's money and scientific credibility might get her a minute or two with the Senator.

Castle carries the champagne back to Brennan. She is stunning in a black floor length number that she and Beckett had managed to find in a hurry. Castle would have, under normal circumstances, preferred to have Beckett on his arms. But it wasn't normal circumstances. Not that Brennan doesn't look great on his arm.

He hands one of the flutes to Brennan and she takes a fake sip in a way that he finds overly theatrical. How did she handle the undercover cases they sometimes had to do, he wonders? But then he remembers that she is the one wearing the receiver in her ear because he hadn't been able to stop putting his hand to his ear, Secret Service-style, every time Booth had spoken to him. Maybe he shouldn't be judging.

Brennan casually looks around the room before whispering to him. "Beckett and Booth are in place." Castle remembers the plan, with Beckett on the street, and Booth about a mile away. He hopes it works, because if it doesn't, there is no backup close by.

"Good, let's get this over with," he replies.

He walks Brennan across the room to where Bracken is holding a sort of receiving line. Security is standing a discreet distance away - reasonable enough since every guest has been wanded and walked through a metal detector on entry. Castle blows out a breath, once again thanking their lucky stars that the Vice President left earlier that day.

Soon, the crowd ahead of them clears, and it is their turn.

"Senator Bracken, it's a pleasure. Richard Castle," Castle says, holding out his hand. Bracken shakes it. Castle notices a brief flash of confusion cross Bracken's eyes before the politician schools himself. Does he recognize me, Castle wonders, or does he just wonder if he should? Too late for it, either way, he decides before continuing. "And may I introduce my date, Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian Institute?"

Another flash, Castle notes, but it appears this time it is more in reaction to Temperance's cleavage.

As Brennan steps forward, she trips slightly, pitching forward to catch herself on the Senator. Bracken moving quickly, catches her left arm to keep her mostly upright, but she drops her purse.

"Senator, I'm so sorry," she says, leaning further down to pick up the clutch. Bracken and Castle both lean forward, Bracken to continue to help her stand, and Castle to block the view of the bodyguard a few feet away. As she stands up, she quickly punches out with her right fist, the middle knuckle covered in an ornate ring, and drives the point of the ring into the inside of Bracken's right thigh, right where the femoral artery is closest to the surface.

As quickly as she'd struck, she pulls back, bringing herself fully upright, and stares at the Senator. Outside of the three of them, no one around has any idea what has happened.

"Wait, what was..." Bracken starts to ask, and then collapses.

Castle has known Bracken's fainting was coming, or at least to expect it, but it still takes him by surprise to watch the man drop in front of him. Castle catches one side of Bracken and Brennan the other before anyone other than his bodyguard can see what is going on.

"Quick," Castle says to the bodyguard, "he fainted. We need to get him to the bathroom."

The bodyguard freezes for a moment. "I don't think we should move him. What the hell happened?"

"He's probably been standing too long and had a vasovagal episode," Brennan says smoothly.

"Do you want the news tomorrow to be all about how the Senator can't even stand on his own? Who do you think his campaign manager is going to blame for that one?" Castle adds quickly.

The potential for blame, as usual, gets action. The bodyguard steps in, taking half of the Senator from Brennan, and he and Castle quickly move the man down the hall into the bathroom, away from people.

Once in the room, the bodyguard manages to recover some of his presence of mind, and quickly checks each of the stalls. Castle lets him fret for a second as he lowers Bracken to the floor. Brennan looks over Bracken, and as the Bodyguard finishes his sweep, she looks up.

"Open the window. We need some cool air in here to wake him up."

The bodyguard hesitates.

"You already checked the room," Castle says, "and my date here is a doctor." He choses not to point out that she has a PhD, not a medical degree.

The bodyguard turns, unlocks the window, and throws open the sash. Castle feels what happens next more than he sees or hears anything. One second the bodyguard is checking the alley, the next he is falling backwards as the tranquilizer dart that Booth has fired from a few blocks away enters his system. Castle is barely able to slide out of the way before the large man hits the tile.

"You gotta teach me that Spock neck pinch thing," Castle says to Brennan once he is sure the bodyguard is out cold.

"I don't know who Spock is, but the shock to the femoral artery is not a particularly guaranteed attack. I suspect it only worked tonight because he's been on his feet most of the day, and is also likely dehydrated. I also covered the tips of my ring in a sedative that Booth had available, just in case."

"Still, coolest thing ever."

"Can we discuss cool things later, Castle," he hears from the window, "and get moving?"

He looks up to see Beckett, dressed in her uniform blues, crawling through the window. She'd posted herself at the alleyway, under the guise of a beat cop. He decides not to mention how hot he thinks the uniform makes her look. Probably not the time.

Brennan and Beckett quickly manage to get Bracken up off the floor and through the window. Castle, working by himself, has a harder time moving the bodyguard into a stall, removing the tranq dart, and positioning him on the toilet. The guy is big enough that Castle can wedge the man's shoulder against the side of the stall to keep him upright. He hopes that the guy will stay put on the toilet for an hour or so. He takes the two flutes and pours the champagne over the bodyguard. The guy is going to smell drunk as hell and be fired tomorrow. For a moment, Castle feels bad, but he figures getting the man away from Bracken is probably doing him a favor in the long run.

Castle realizes he needs to get moving. Someone will notice the Senator's disappearance soon. He closes the stall door, completing the illusion.

Castle, finished with the guard, crawls through the window and pulls it as closed as he can behind him. It won't stand up to scrutiny, but it will have to do.

At the end of the alley, Brennan is closing the trunk on Bracken. Beckett is in the driver's seat of the interceptor she has "borrowed" from the motor pool, and without another word, she drives off. Castle stands next to Brennan as they watch Beckett leave. If the last part goes right, they'll see her in a bit. Once she is out of sight, he and Brennan turn to head back towards the crowd. Dressed as they are, their best hope is to slip into the milling crowd and disappear into Castle's waiting town car before Bracken's disappearance is noted and the party is locked down.

They are nearly to the end of the alley when Castle spots a uniformed cop walking towards them. He pushes Brennan to the side, out of the man's sightline, but it is too late. He's spotted them.

"Hey! What are you doing back here?" The cop yells to them.

Castle does the first thing he can think of and pushes Brennan against the wall. Praying she'll understand, he leans in and kisses her, just as the cop comes around to see them.

"Hey! Oh..." Castle hears the cop exclaim. "Folks, you can't be back here."

"Sorry," Castle says with a grin as he breaks apart from Brennan. "Just needed some privacy, you know?"

"Well, not here. Go," the cop says, trying to sound menacing but failing. Castle and Brennan both nod, and Castle pulls her away from the cop and into the town car. He motions for the driver to go, and doesn't breathe until the cop is a blurred dot in the rearview mirror.

"We got away with it," Castle says, once he feels safe.

"Got away with what, exactly?" Brennan asks. "Because Booth says he can't decide if he's going to kill you, or if he's going to tell Detective Beckett what you did back there and let her do it."

He'd meant the abduction, of course. But for once, he keeps his mouth shut.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: **Don't own HH or AWM's stuff. But if you scramble their initials, you get WHAM H, which sounds like a George Michael cover band.

* * *

Chapter 10

Site 34 - Queens, New York

Castle and Beckett walk into the deserted warehouse about ninety minutes later only to find their partners in the midst of an argument that is about to slide completely out of control. But, as usual, Castle isn't sure what to do about it.

"You are not going to be in the room," Booth yells at Beckett.

"You are not keeping me out."

"If you go in there, he's going to know you are involved."

"I really don't care. This asshole wants me dead, and I want to look him in the face when he says it."

"You go in, there is no going back."

"I think we crossed that line a while ago," Beckett says, and promptly ends the argument by turning and walking into the ersatz holding room they'd set aside for Bracken in the back of the warehouse. Booth immediately follows, right on her heels.

Castle looks over at Brennan. After a second, they both seem to agree - they need to be there too. Brennan steps inside, but hangs near the door, and Castle follows her.

The room is largely dark, except for the center of the room, where a single bulb hangs over Bracken. The warehouse, a deserted mess held in escrow by some shell corporation about thirty levels deep on Booth's friend's P&L, has been their base for the last day. Castle is a little fuzzy on the details, but apparently Booth and Brennan have some very very rich friend who is determined to help them. He can't begrudge them that, after all, he's the one that has begged more than a favor or two from the mayor.

Still, the whole thing feels cliche. He can't help but think, given the time, he could write a better scene for them.

Bracken looks up from the chair he is taped to. "You," he yells, seeing Beckett. "I thought we had a deal!"

Beckett strides across the room, grabs the back of the chair Bracken is in, and pulls. He drops, landing painfully on his shoulders and he grunts hard as the wind leaves him. Even though the guy is a jackass, Castle can't help but grimace in sympathy.

Beckett leans down, getting her head close to Bracken's. "You want to talk to me about our deal? What part of our deal included your idiots ransacking my apartment? Leaving a bullet on my counter? Any of this sound like the terms of our deal?" Her voice is low and calm, and both Castle and Beckett are straining to hear her. It worries Castle, since he knows the contained fury version of Beckett is rarely an act.

"I am a U.S. Senator! You have any idea what you've gotten yourself into?"

Booth places his hand on Beckett's shoulder. She give him a look, but allows herself to be pulled away. Booth takes her place, leaning down next to Bracken.

"Hello, Senator. Feeling okay? Can I get you anything?"

"What is this? Bad cop, stupid cop? Do you have any idea what kind of power you've brought down upon yourself?"

Booth looks away, as if he is staring into space. "You don't get it, do you? It took us hours … hours, Senator, to figure out how to get to you. All your money, all your power, and we can still get to you without even breaking a sweat. Let me ask you something, Senator. Do you have any idea what real power is?"

Beckett and Booth, at odds just minutes earlier, seem to be utterly in sync now as Beckett kneels down again on Bracken's other side. She looks at Booth, but speaks to Bracken.

"You buy power. You rent it any play with it, thinking you control it. But you have to borrow it from others. We have it."

Bracken looks ready to spit at both of them, but isn't speaking, so Booth continues.

"All these ex-military guys that you keep sending out, that make you feel like some sort of powerful general … who do you think keeps defeating them? Senator," Booth says, leaning in, "who do you think trained them?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Coonan. Lockwood. Maddox. Broadsky," Booth says. Castle notes the confused look in Bracken's eyes at 'Broadsky.' He stores that tidbit away for latter. "They all had to learn their craft somewhere, didn't they? I taught all of them, Bracken. They know how to kill. I know how to kill. They know how to get away with it. I know how to get away with it. And tonight, you learn who is really in charge."

Castle is startled to see how quickly Bracken shuts down, goes white. Bracken starts talking rapidly, but too quietly. Only Booth, and maybe Beckett, can hear. Castle and Brennan both move forward.

It is the same thing, over and over.

"It's not my fault, I've done what he wanted. It's not my fault, I've done what he wanted. It's not my fault, I've done what he wanted."

"What the hell does that mean?" Castle asks before he can stop himself. Bracken's eyes are clamped shut, tears coming out of the sides.

Beckett looks up. Seeing Castle, she pulls him away, and all Brennan and Booth follow the pair to the far corner of the room. Out of Bracken's earshot, they can still hear him muttering. He looks over at them and yells.

"I'm still your man! Tell him!"

"What did you say to him?" Castle asks Booth. They'd all agreed beforehand that they needed to find a way to scare the hell out of Bracken to get him to talk. None of them, however, expected him to break this quickly.

It is Beckett that speaks. "We may have misjudged who's in charge here."

Castle looks at Booth.

"There is someone else, someone higher up. Bracken seems to think we're here..." Booth says.

"...to eliminate him," Beckett finishes.

"Something like that."

Brennan, who hadn't yet spoken, finally pipes up. "What was the exact evidence that we had that Bracken was the one after you?"

Beckett tries to stare her down, but Brennan is oblivious. "The account used to pay Coonan and others was tied to Bracken."

"That's it?" Booth asks.

"There might have been more, but we lost it in the explosion."

Booth stifles a swear. "It's too clean."

"What does that mean?" Castle asks.

"Program guys would never work with an operator dumb enough to leave a trail like that. Unless it was..."

"Unless it was a false trail," Beckett spit out.

"Yeah."

Castle wonders if he should speak. "Or..."

Three heads turn towards him.

"Unless they made him do it."

Booth makes a 'go on' gesture.

"Well, like you said - we thought The Program was working for him. But what if it's the other way around? What if they set up a few little things like the bank account, so they could bring down Bracken, if he was no longer useful?"

"Useful?"

"He's a Senator. A Senator with a decent outside shot at the presidency. Pretty nice pawn to have, if you need it."

They all thought through that for a few moments, the room quiet save for Bracken's whimpering.

"So now we have the reverse problem," Booth says. "Instead of finding out how Bracken was able to use Program guys..."

"We have to find out how Program guys found to use Bracken."

"Yeah."

"Well, at least the lynchpin is the same," Beckett says, turning back to Bracken. Booth grabs her arm.

"What's your plan?" he asks. None of the anger from the fight before is there. Now it's just two experienced interrogators, trying to find a rhythm together.

"Wing it," she says, and strides off to their prisoner. There is no hesitation this time as the other three follow.

"Think I mean business now?" Beckett asks Bracken, once she is standing over him.

"I don't … I don't understand," Bracken says. "He said you were a threat. I did what he told me to do."

Kate leans down, right into Bracken's face again. Lying on his back, tied to a collapsed chair, he looks far less scary than he had when they thought he was a criminal mastermind. His face, covered in sweat, looks small and stupid. He is a puppet. They can all see that now.

"How did you learn about Raglan and McAllister?"

"What?"

"The cops you were blackmailing. How did you find out about the kidnappings?"

He starts shaking his head. "No no no..."

She puts her knee down on his shoulder. With his arms tied back, her weight starts to push his shoulder out of its socket. He yells.

"I didn't know about the kidnappings until after!"

"Then how did you blackmail them?"

"I wasn't blackmailing them! I was paying them!"

"What?"

"My boss made me! She gave me the money, and I'd scrub it clean and give the cops their cut!"

"Your boss?"

"Yes, my boss! She started all of this! I had no choice, you have no idea what they'd do to me otherwise! Please, stop! Let me... my shoulder! Please!"

Booth, who had been standing off a bit to let Kate work, cuts in. Kate stands up and Bracken gasps at the release of pressure on his shoulder. "We need the story, Bracken, and it better be a good one," Booth says. Bracken, sweating, nods vigorously.

Bracken makes a short series of wheezing gasps, trying to get himself back under control. Kate seems to decide that the torture part of the interrogation is over, so she nods to Castle, and the two of them right Bracken's chair. They give Bracken a minute to catch his breath.

"I'll tell you."

"Everything," Beckett says.

****"Yeah, yeah, everything..." he says. And then, with one last breath, he begins.

* * *

**A/N: **I haven't been keeping up with my review replies, but to all of you who have left kind words - you are what's kept me from giving up on this tiny little story, so thank you.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Bracken's story...

New York, early 1990s

I was a young assistant district attorney who'd beaten out hundreds of people for a job in Manhattan. I thought I had a chance to be the best there ever was, so I was hungry, aggressive, but trying to be smart too.

I hadn't been at the job long before I heard the rumors about a bunch of kidnapper cops. We all had. I didn't like it, but I didn't want to make my reputation on being the guy that went after cops, so I kept my mouth shut, just like everyone else.

After about a year though, I had enough cases under my belt that I got assigned something juicy. A guy, Carcetti, was rumored to be a comer, a sort of hedge fund manager for the Five Families. He'd been pulled on laundering charges and I wanted to get other stuff to stick too. I'll admit it, I was young and dumb and thought I could make a name for myself. I wanted to be the guy that took down the Five.

So I started working connections, but every time I'd get somewhere, the guy I was after would get kidnapped by the NYPD. My chance to get anybody but Carcetti was falling apart, and I needed someone to get a handle on Raglan and McAllister. I didn't know who they were, then, just that they were out there. But I needed them gone. So I went to Internal Affairs and asked them why they weren't doing anything about it. They told me they wouldn't move without my boss's approval.

My boss.

My boss was scary, even then, even before I knew … the rest. She was my age, but she'd gotten through undergrad and law school in something like five years total. Made CADA by the time she was twenty-eight. Second highest person in the office even though she was younger than almost everybody. But she was faster, smarter, worked harder, and frankly, scared the shit out of all of us. No one went to her unless we needed to, and no one begrudged her her position.

But I went to her that time.

"I need to talk to you," I said, one night, near the end of the day. She was always the last one there. I figured it would be a safer conversation if no one else was there.

"I've wondered when you'd get your 'fraidy ass into my office. Morrow over in IA called me thirty seconds after you talked," she said, not looking up. I took that as invitation, and sat in her guest chair.

"I have a real shot here at Carcetti..."

"Yes," she said, interrupting. She looked from her paperwork to me. She wasn't overly tall or pretty, other that her red hair. But her eyes... it's been years since I saw her last, but I can still remember the way Taffet could stare her blue eyes through your soul and drop your body temperature twenty degrees. She pinned me down with that stare, and I had no choice but to shut up.

"Yes, you have a real shot at Carcetti. But you keep fucking up and thinking you are going to destroy organized crime as you know it. And somehow, you've gotten it in that pretty little head of yours that the only thing stopping you is a few freelancing cops."

"It's more than..."

"Look, Bracken. You're smart, though not as smart as you think. You're pretty enough, in a nice masculine kind of way. You're ambitious, and blue-blooded. You could have a pretty decent career in front of you if you're smart enough not to fuck it up by actually trying to get something done."

I didn't have any idea how to respond to that. I felt like I was being insulted, in some odd way.

"You play your cards right, you're not going to sit in this chair, but you could get yourself elected to Drake's chair. From there, I can see you being a Congressman, a Senator, hell, maybe even a Secretary of something, someday."

Taffet stood up, and came around her desk. She leaned against it, but curled down to get in close to my face. "But you're only going to get there if you shut up and let the real money and power use you as they see fit."

"Are you telling me to..."

"I'm telling you to stop dicking around, bring your laundering case against Carcetti to trial. He'll plead out, we'll get him off the street for eighteen months, you'll have a nice little win under your belt for when you run for Congress in a few years. Or you can keep pushing and get to see what real power is."

"I can't do that. There's more here than just Carcetti. We have a real chance."

"Fine, Bill," she said, like she'd already known what I was going to say. "Let's go for a drive."

"Where are we going?" I asked standing up. She was reasonably big for a woman, but still, I dwarfed her.

"What? You afraid of little ole me?" she asked. In retrospect, I can see that I should have been. I really should have been.

* * *

We drove her Honda out to Queens. I tried to talk, but something about her said to keep my mouth shut, so I just waited her out. We ended up at some little dive Italian Restaurant straight out of the Godfather. I expected to walk in and see Michael killing Sollozzo. But Heather lead us straight through the restaurant into some back room.

It was dark, sorta like here, and I started to wonder what the hell she was getting me into.

"Sit down," she said, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see some chairs a few feet away. I grabbed the one nearest me and sat.

"Is this the big bad wolf that wants to take out Raglan and McAllister? Who wants to bring down all the families? Who thinks he can do what no one has ever done, not in two hundred years?"

I couldn't see who was talking, and like I said, I had no idea who Raglan and McAllister were. But I still got the sense, very very quickly, that I was in trouble.

"He is that indeed," Taffet said. She looked behind me at something, and a pair of large hands came down on my shoulders. I tried not to flinch, and failed.

"So you have ambition and not brains," the voice said, this time to me.

"I... I..." I'd like to say I was more articulate, but was struck dumb.

"Normally I'd like that. There is some value in that. But not in a district attorney. However, my associate here is right. You are pretty, and that has its own uses. The question is, are you willing to be useful?"

"I can't be bought off," I said, finding a little bit of voice at last.

"Oh, oh," Taffet said, "we're not going to buy you off, poor boy." She walked up to me, and lifted my shirt. The hands on my shoulders tightened, and more hands grabbed my wrists, holding them behind my chair. I tried to struggle, but failed.

"Oh good," she said, staring at my stomach. "You still have it."

"You are familiar with the appendix?" the voice asked. He continued without my answering. "Terribly useless thing, but unless it causes problems, we leave it alone. That was you, this past year. Just an appendix. But now … now that you seem to insist on making trouble, you've become inflamed. And you know what we do with an appendix that's become inflamed?"

I sort of felt the knife in Taffet's hand more than I saw it. I'll never forget that first moment, when it broke my skin. Hot and cold, all at once. I want to say I was brave and strong, but I … I cried and screamed like a little girl. I screamed until I passed out.

* * *

I don't know how much time past before I woke up. It was still night, so it couldn't have been too long. Taffet had finished her bloody work, and taped me up. I was on my side, on the cold concrete, and it hurt horribly to try to prop myself up into a sitting position, but I did it. I looked around. They had left my appendix for me, sitting on a white cloth, just a foot or two from my head.

"You're thinking about revenge now," the voice said, seeing that I was awake. "You are thinking you'll go to the cops. You'll tell them about this, get them to come after Taffet and me. Let me dissuade you of that notion right now. You aren't the first person who has come here. You aren't the first who has thought those thoughts. But all the others who chose to act on them are dead. I suggest, instead, that you concentrate on how you can become useful to us. I promise … it will be more rewarding than the alternative."

I was drunk on my pain, and scared. And maybe I still should have said no. I know I should have said no. Maybe that will be my eternal shame. But I couldn't.

"What do you need?" I asked, looking at Taffet. She smiled, and I realized it was the first time I'd ever seen her smile with any real warmth. This bloody killer - that was the real Taffet. CADA Heather Taffet was all a ruse.

"Good boy," she said. "We're going to make you famous."

And they did. They made me famous. But I was also completely trapped.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Site 34 - Queens

Bracken is spent after his story, and he leans into his chest, sucking air. Beckett steps towards him, not ready to give up the interrogation.

"Taffet. Heather Taffet was your boss?"

Bracken nodded weakly. Booth steps forward, ripping the man's shirt out of his waistband, revealing a pale, slightly overweight stomach. A rough, ugly scar sits just above where Bracken's appendix should be.

"What do you think?" Booth asks Brennan. "Could Taffet have done that?"

Brennan leans in. "The cut shows some medical training, but I have no prior work of Taffet's by which to compare. I would merely be guessing."

"I get it, Bones, but guess anyway."

"I don't feel comfortable doing that. But I can say that it was not done in a hospital, and is otherwise consistent with the elements of his story."

Booth drops the shirt and swears under his breath. "Taffet's dead, Bracken, and even before that, she's been gone from here for years."

"She was here long enough. After that night, she had me start laundering the kidnapping money. She'd been running the cops from the beginning."

"And after she left?"

"Her boss... he'd contact me."

"How?"

"It'd be different each time. Go to a bookstore and find a particular book. Send a letter with a made up return address. Something left in my car or a note my wife would find in her purse. Nowadays it's mostly emails."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know … no! no!" he says quickly, worried that Booth or Beckett won't accept the answer. "I really don't. I knew Taffet because I worked with her. But, after she was gone, the only people I ever interacted with were different random guys. I hired a PI once to follow them, see if I could find their boss. He's never been heard from again."

"Then what did he have you do?"

"Launder money. Make sure that the DA's office passed on certain cases due to lack of evidence. He had me wire money to some military outfit a couple of times. I didn't know why, most of the time. I didn't know the one time was for your mom until years later, when he had me do the same thing and then Raglan turned up dead."

"Why did he have my mom killed then, if it wasn't about the kidnappings?"

"I don't know! I really don't. I told you, I didn't even know why I was sending out money, I was just too scared to care. But..."

"What?"

"The day before she was killed, your mom came to us and made an information release request."

"About what?"

"An undercover officer."

"Bob Armin."

"Yeah. I didn't make the connection until a lot later, when a paralegal had me sign off on the month's requests. I don't know what she found. Hell, I don't even know if she found anything. It just ... it never seemed like a coincidence, you know?"

Neither Beckett nor Booth says anything, but Castle sort of nods, knowing what Bracken means.

"Why did you pretend like you were in charge?"

Bracken looks about ready to cry. "I was told you'd come after me. He said you'd think I was the guy in charge, and that I couldn't let you know otherwise. I was supposed to do whatever I had to to keep you away."

Beckett looks up and away, like she can't decide to get angry or just quit. Booth makes a motion with his hand, pulling all four of them away from Bracken. They regroup, once again, in the corner.

"So now what do we do with him?"

"Well, he's nothing but a liability to us now. We leave him alive and he either turns us in or turns us over to his boss."

"NO!" Bracken yells. Everyone turns to stare at him. "If I turn you in... he'll know. He'll worry I talked to you. He'll kill me..." Bracken says. He continues, barely above a whisper. "He'll make it hurt first."

Beckett waits a few seconds, then goes over to Bracken. She kneels down next to him, sympathetic and motherly this time.

"There is one option, Bracken. It goes like this. You were getting tired, you needed some fresh air. Your bodyguard had gone off to the bathroom, so you figured you could slip out into the alley for a minute for some fresh air."

"I still smoke, every so often. I could say I was sneaking a cigarette."

"And you heard a noise. You went to the end of the alley the one away from the front, and there was a mugging. The mugger hit you, and then ran off. You tried to chase him, but after a block or two, you had to sit down, because the punch made your head hurt. You must have fallen asleep, but when you woke up, you wandered back to the fundraiser, but you tried to stay hidden. It wouldn't be good to be seen in your condition. Could you tell that story?"

Bracken starts to nod vigorously, but then stops. "Wait, how do I explain to them that it doesn't look like I got punched?" he asks.

Beckett stands up, and like she did a few days prior, strikes out hard, a wide closed-fist haymaker that connects just inside Bracken's temple, where the eye socket starts, and the flesh will bruise easily.

"I don't think that will be a problem," she says.

* * *

Size 32 Brooklyn

After dropping Bracken in an alley three blocks from the fundraiser, they all retreat to Booth's second hidey-hole, a small apartment in Brooklyn. On the way, Booth calls in another code to have Hodgins' team sweep and dispose of the warehouse. The apartment is a third-floor one bedroom walkup in Brownsville.

"I have to say, Agent Booth, I'm not sure we're all going to fit in this closet."

"Shut it, fancy boy. Those of us that work for a living have to put up with places like this. My place, when I first became an agent, was smaller than this."

Castle looks around. He was really just trying to lighten the mood, but the place is a dump. He wonders for a moment; Kate's a cop and yet her place is in Manhattan, much larger and much nicer than this place. He does the math, and is pretty sure that her property taxes are more than what she takes home in salary. So her frugality is largely a show. Interesting, he thinks. Just another weird thing about Beckett that she's never let him know.

But not something to worry about tonight.

Booth turns on the TV, an old CRT whose colors have faded, but is connected to a digital converter. The local news is all covering Bracken's story. They watch for a few minutes, trying to guess whether Bracken is going to out them or not.

For a tense thirty minutes, no one talks.

Eventually the news ends without any interesting revelations, and the four let out a collective breath. Booth breaks the silence.

"Well, we're safe for the night, anyway, so let's get some rest. Better or worse, Hodgins planned for four of us to be in this place, so we got a queen in the bedroom and two twins out here. You can ... push the beds together... if you want."

Castle is fine with that, though he'd like to call dibs on the bigger bed, he's sure Booth would consider that a shootable offense. Beckett, however, appears reluctant.

"Don't we need to discuss our plan of attack first?" she asks.

"My plan of attack is this. Soldier's rules - never pass up an opportunity to piss, eat or sleep, cause you won't know when it'll come again. I need all three. We all do."

Castle steps in. "We'll be sharper in the morning, with sleep and some pancakes."

"Still, we need to find out what my Mom found out about Armin."

"Yeah," Booth says, "we do. To-mor-row."

Kate tries to stare him down, but eventually gives up. The next several minutes are taken up with logistics - taking turns with the bathroom, making the beds. Castle is impressed by Booth's planning abilities - or his friend's anyway - the place is a dump, but it's clean, well stocked, and the beds are firm. Castle and Beckett are close enough in size to Booth and Brennan that some clothes sharing is possible. At least bedclothes anyway. Morning will bring its own challenges.

Castle comes out of the bathroom last to find Brennan and Booth gone to the bedroom. Beckett is waiting for him, sitting on the edge of one of the beds. He notes, happily, that she took Booth's advice and pushed the two beds together.

He crawls into bed without a word, and she tucks in beside him, a teaspoon to his soup spoon, as if they've been doing this for years, instead of one night.

"Does it ever end, Castle?"

"Does what end?"

"Every time I... we ... get one step closer, it's really just two steps farther away. Now we don't even know why she was killed."

"We know now it has to do with Armin."

"Any records around Armin would be held at 1 PP. I can't even get in there with my suspension."

"But I can."

She slides around in his arms so that she's facing him. "The mayor?"

"I'll claim it's research on cold cases for possible stories."

"But if I can't go with you..."

"It's research. I'm good at research."

"I'm more worried about you than the research."

Castle starts. Two days ago, she was choosing her mother's case over him, but now... he looks at her; his thinking must've shown on his face, because hers has softened.

"Yes, Castle. I told you, I choose you."

"Well, I'll take Booth with me then. Because I don't think The Dragon is giving us a choice."

She tucks her head down into the crook of his neck. "No, I guess he isn't," she says into his collarbone. He hugs her tighter.

"Hey, I think Booth is right. Enough for tonight. We both need sleep."

"Just sleep?"

"Well..."

She laughs, and then leans in for a kiss. The talking portion of the night is over.

* * *

In the bedroom, Booth and Bones find themselves having a similar conversation.

"Bones, I'm thinking ... You should head back to D.C. You could be under Cantilever's protection with Angela and Hodgins."

"You think I'm not valuable here?"

"I'm thinking of what I can do to make you and the baby safe."

Bones' rests her head on his chest. Her hair tickles his nose for a second and he's back in his room, nearly a month ago, when he comforted her after Vincent's death.

Only a month.

"It's a sound strategy, Booth. And maybe, one day, it will be an appropriate one. But I don't want to leave you."

"Bones..."

"First off, Booth, Broadsky left the note in my apartment. I'm involved, as much as you. And second ... I find that I am unwilling to leave you, even if it were the logical thing to do. I guess that means I love you."

She's said something like this a few times, like she know what she feels, but is still trying to rationalize it. He's fine with it. She'll get there, he knows.

"Okay, Bones. But we have to find a way to get you more sleep and food."

"The idea that a pregnant woman needs to consume twice as much is the byproduct of social constructionalism."

"Socio convolutedism aside, Bones, chasing madmen while running from snipers isn't typically considered a good idea for a pregnant woman."

"I would assume that such a situation has happened too few times..."

"Bones," Booth interrupts, knowing by her change in language that she's feeling off-balance. "Let's get some sleep."

She stops talking, and tucks further into his side, her right leg and arm coming up over him. "I do enjoy sleeping next to you far more than I thought I would. I wonder if it has some evolutionary anticedant to when..."

Booth decides to end the conversation by kissing her.


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer: **I own zilch-o.

**A/N: **Sorry for the delay. Real life got in the way. I'll try not to let that happen in the future.

* * *

Chapter 13: Manhattan

Booth presses his back against the wall of the alley. He has always known that dying in bed at the end of a long and happy life was probably unlikely, given his choices of professions. Still, dying in a dark alley of Manhattan seems unfair.

Lefty raises his gun a bit higher, tightening the focus of the suppressed Glock on the bridge of Booth's nose. Booth imagines he can see all the way down the barrel to the copper tip of the bullet in the chamber.

"Last chance," Leftie says. "Tell me where she is and I might let you live."

"Sure, after a nice long game of hide and go fuck yourself, pal."

Leftie says nothing about Booth's quip, but something in the way his grip shifts let's Booth know it's the end.

Booth hears the muffled whack as the exploding gas from the gunshot passes through the suppressor and into the world. It's an odd noise - a dropping stack of phonebooks on a rickety table - louder than the movies, but nowhere near what a real shot would sound like.

Booth closes his eyes. He always thought he'd face death with open eyes, take what was due him from a life of bad deeds. But he closes his eyes anyway. He guesses he was all wrong, after all.

* * *

One Police Plaza, Manhattan

Three hours earlier...

"This is a complete waste," Booth says, dropping the latest folder in front of him. He leans back in the ancient wooden chair - one that sat in the archivist's basement since 1 PP's opening in 1898. His back is tightening and his patience is completely shorted.

Castle looks up from where he's seated, across from Booth at a table strewn with police paperwork. Bob Armin's life has left a paper trail. As Castle has noticed before, military and police organizations primary purpose seems to be to produce paperwork, with a lot of ancillary things like stopping crimes thrown in when they get around to it. The NYPD is no exception, and the Undercover Division of Organized Crime seems to be gunning for some sort of award.

Castle takes one last glance at the page he's reading and throws the whole folder on the discard pile. Getting into 1PP and gaining access to the archives proved to be a trivial task compared to what came next - thirty-four boxes of paperwork on Bob Armin's life. Castle and Booth have been at it for close to five hours, without a lick of evidence as to why Bob Armin might be a link to The Dragon.

"I don't get it," Castle says, "Everything I've looked at says Armin was as squeaky clean as they come. I'm betting you could find more dirt on Mr. Rogers than this guy. What am I not seeing?"

Booth shrugs, "Nothing. Even reading between the lines..." Booth blows a raspberry and leans in on his hands. "We're running out of pages."

"Distract me."

"What?"

"I need to let my subconscious think. I need you to distract me."

"Castle, we don't have time for crap like this..."

"It's not crap. We've been staring at this too long."

Booth nods. He may not agree with Castle, but he needs a break.

"You kissed my girlfriend."

"Sorry, I ... first distraction I could think of."

Booth stares at him for a few seconds. "Fine, just ... don't go falling into any old habits, okay? Whatever you and Bones were ... she's with me now."

Castle shakes his head. "Temperance and I have never been anything more than friends, Booth."

"Right."

"Ask her. Or don't. I, for one, am happy for the two of you. She's been wanting this a long time."

"How would you know?"

"We've been friends for years. I think I've known her for about as long as you have."

"Then you'd know she hasn't ... this is a recent thing."

"I've known her long enough to know that what she wants and what she rationalizes aren't always the same thing."

Booth looks off at the door for a while before nodding. "Yeah. I worry ... forget it."

"She talked herself out of it for so long that now she's just talking herself into it?"

Booth's head spins back to Castle. Booth wonders if he's still underestimating Castle. "Yeah."

"She doesn't change her mind often."

"Yeah, but ... " Booth stops, surprised by what he's about to say. "She's pregnant."

Castle tilts his head for a second, before smiling. "Awesome."

Booth smiles wide in response. "Yeah. ... yeah it is. I just keep wondering, what comes after?"

"Well, first she'll have morning sickness..." Castle jokes, trailing off at Booth's sour look. "Sorry. What comes after what?"

"I love Bones, and yeah, it's all sudden, but I know she loves me too. But ... we don't really agree on anything. Not religion, not marriage, not parenting or, hell... sometimes I think she'd argue the sky's green, just cause I said it's blue."

Castle chuckles. "Yeah, I know the feeling."

Booth nods, thinking of the other mismatched pairing in their little quartet. "I just wonder when we'll find the thing that we can't stop arguing about."

"Did you know I've been divorced twice?"

"You sayin' you're the wrong guy to ask?"

"I'm saying," Castle replies, "I may not be the best at knowing what makes a relationship work, but I've got a bit of experience with why relationships end. Do you trust her?"

"Of course."

"When you argue, do you think it's because she wants to make you mad or doesn't think much of you?"

"She sometimes thinks I'm dumb."

"Compared to Temperance, we're all dumb."

"Yeah, true. And no, she doesn't do it to hurt me."

"Think she will? Do you think you will?"

"No."

Castle leans back in his rickety chair. "Seems like you're set to me."

Booth doesn't respond for awhile, just thinking about what Castle has said.

"What comes after!" Booth exclaims, finally.

"Yeah, we just covered that," Castle says.

"No, I mean with Armin."

Castle sits up. "You mean after his death, don't you? I don't think I saw anything..."

"I didn't either."

"Thirty-four boxes of crap and nothing about his murder? Would it be in a separate file?"

Booth gets up, goes to the door of the archival room. He leans out the frame and yells down the hall. "Hey!"

A few seconds later, the retired cop that serves as the main archivist comes down the hall. "They don't teach manners at the mayor's office, do they?"

"Sorry," Booth says, straightening up. "We went through all the boxes you gave us. We didn't see anything on the guy's murder."

"Your guy was murdered? I thought you needed his undercover records."

"We didn't realize they'd be separate things."

"Oh yeah, sure. Undercover cop killed in the line of duty...those records'll be sealed."

"And?"

"Oh! Yeah, when was he killed?"

"1992."

"Twenty years ... yeah, those records should just now be available. Name's Armin, right? Gimme just a minute."

Booth watches the archivist trundle off, and turns back to Castle.

"Told ya we need to let the subconscious work," Castle says.

"Still... woulda been nice to realize this 4 hours ago."

Castle shrugs. "Didn't enjoy bonding?"

Booth bites back his retort.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, they are back on the street, headed back to the subway, with their evidence in hand. Castle continues to flip through the folder as they walk.

"I still don't see why this wouldn't have come out after Armin's murder," Castle says.

"Nothing was confirmed," Booth replies as he continually looks around, "NYPD wouldn't want to muddy up the story about one of their best undercover guys, especially when he'd just died as a hero."

"Yeah, but they'd still want to find the money..."

"Castle," Booth interrupts, "We're being followed."

Castle closes the folder and starts to look around. "Really?"

"Two guys, standard staggered formation. One of them is watching us from the reflection of that electronics store."

"Big guy, wearing that ugly leather jacket?"

"Yeah, other guy is about a block behind us. We're gonna split up."

"Split up?"

"You need two guys to do a proper follow. They'll both come after me. But if they don't... lead the one that follows you on a goose chase. Stay in public areas, on the subways, whatever. Just stay in Manhattan. Don't go back to the apartment."

"And how do I find you again?"

"There used to be a falafel truck on 6th and 47th."

"Just south of Rockefeller center. Yeah, it's still there. Best place in town."

"Be there in two hours, exactly. Don't stay for more than 10 minutes. If I'm not there, meet me in Battery Park in four hours. If I'm not there either... get back to Bones and Beckett as fast as you can and get everyone to Hodgins."

"I don't see why we can't stay together and..."

"Go left, now," Booth interrupts at the intersection. He breaks right, running across traffic just as the light changes.

He doesn't look back for three blocks.

Booth checks the reflection in a bank window a few blocks later to see that the two guys have indeed ignored Castle and followed him. He decides almost immediately not to lose the guys. He's always been more of a direct action guy anyway. He's going to lead these guys into a dead end and then they'll talk. Or something.

He finds the ideal place to converse in the form of an alley a block later.

Booth takes a hard left into the alley, immediately calculating what he has to work with. The sides of the alley are crowded with dumpsters and assorted flotsam. He turns so that he is facing back towards the street. He creeps slightly to his left. The left side is cleaner, and he's weaker on his left. He wants them in front of him, or on the right, when they come.

He doesn't need to wait long. They come almost immediately.

Unlike the guys from the motel, these guys are the Alpha team. They don't waste time playing dumb or hiding their motives. Booth immediately names them in his head - Righty and Lefty. Lefty is bigger, though Righty, at the same size as Booth himself, is no shrinking violet.

Neither of them has drawn a weapon, which Booth figures to mean that they either have a directive to take him alive or are underestimating him. Or they just want to have some fun.

Booth will give them fun.

Righty stays in front of him, but Lefty shifts outward, so that the two men form a ninety degree angle with Booth as the center. A right triangle of pain. Booth can tell by the way that they move that they've both had the same training he has, and moreover, they've worked together before. Booth's not their first back alley target.

Knives get sharp or they get dull. Booth remembers the dictum from his old drill instructor. For a year now, a year away from Afghanistan, Booth has been getting dull. He can only hope these guys have been getting dull for longer.

Lefty makes a feint towards Booth. Booth shuffles, but he knows it's all for show. It won't be like a choreographed fight, where they take their turns. These guys will come at him at the same time - overwhelming force against a completely movable object. He has no interest in waiting for that moment.

He crouches down into a boxer's stance. Righty and Lefty both smile, thinking he's serious about boxing them. Good, he thinks, it means they don't know that he's been trained. So he has one advantage - he knows more about the situation than they do.

Booth dances, like he really thinks he's in a boxing ring, and they play along. He gets close enough to Righty, and then the opening gambits are over.

Booth kicks out, hard, with his left foot. Normally he's not a fan of kicking, it's a showboat move, and the first guy off his feet in a fight is usually the loser. But Righty is expecting a punch, so when Booth's left foot connects with the inside of his knee, he has too much weight forward. With a crack, Righty goes down.

Booth doesn't stop to watch his handiwork. As soon as his foot lands, he pushes off, bum rushing Lefty directly in the stomach and pushing him backwards into the dumpster. Lefty's air leaves him in a rush, but he still has the presence of mind to clamp his arms around Booth and lock him in a bear hug.

Lefty is dull, Booth realizes, but he's still bigger and stronger than Booth. Booth is going to lose any fight that devolves into wrestling, so he does the only thing he can do, and grabs Lefty by the balls and yanks.

It's not a very civil move. Certainly not one you'll see in MMA. But it is effective.

Lefty lets go of Booth immediately and bends forward, wincing over his bruised manhood. Booth hits him hard in the ear for extra emphasis, and then turns back to Righty.

Righty is still on the ground, not unconscious, but not in any danger of rejoining the fight either. Booth goes to see if Righty is armed when a hand grabs his collar and spins him around, into the far wall of the alley.

He is getting dull. He completely underestimated Lefty.

He pushes off the wall, but freezes when Lefty yells.

"Enough." Lefty is holding a Glock 17 with suppressor in his left hand, pointed at Booth. Booth raises his hands above his head as Lefty brings the gun around, cradles his left hand in his right.

"You gonna shoot me?"

"I know you were in the army," Lefty says. "You know the penalty for treason."

"You think I'm a traitor?"

"I think, if you want to live, you can tell me where Dr. Brennan is," Lefty says, taking a step forward. Booth involuntarily takes a step back.

"Like hell."

"I can put a bullet in you, see if that loosens your tongue."

"Why do you want Dr. Brennan?"

"Last chance," Leftie says. "Tell me where she is and I might let you live."

"Sure, after a nice long game of hide and go fuck yourself, pal."

For all his bravado, Booth takes a step back anyway. His body hits the wall. It's a nondescript nothing of an alley. It seems like an odd place to die.

It takes a second or two after Booth hears the gunshot to realize he shouldn't have heard a gunshot at all. How did Lefty miss? He closes his eyes, and opens them again.

Lefty is no longer standing in front of him. Instead, he's curled over, holding his bloody hand between his thighs and screaming.

Booth looks down the alley towards where Righty was lying. Righty is still there, now completely unconscious. Standing over him, however, is Richard Castle.

Richard Castle, holding his own Glock with attached suppressor.

Castle has shot the gun out of Lefty's hand. Booth, who can put one of the 9x19's that a Glock shoots through a quarter at thirty paces, is impressed.

"Hell of a shot, Castle," Booth says.

"Thanks, but I was aiming for his head."

Booth looks at the still raised gun for a moment. "No you weren't."

Castle shrugs, and then moves to keep the gun on Lefty. Excellent marksmanship aside, Booth can tell Castle isn't used to pointing a gun at another person, so he goes over and picks up Lefty's gun off the ground. It's covered in blood, but otherwise fine. Booth points it at Lefty.

"What happened to Righty?" Booth asks.

"Righty?"

"Guy on the ground."

"Oh, I saw him pull out his gun so I hit him with a rock."

It's not the most ridiculous thing he's heard from Castle, and in this case, it was rather effective, so he let's the statement stand.

"I told you to go the other way."

"Yeah, but that seemed dumb, so I followed these guys following you."

Booth leans down to check on Lefty. The man is curled in the fetal position on the ground, his bleeding hand tucked between his legs. Booth looks at the hand. Lefty will live, as will Righty, but neither one is going to be talking anytime soon. He already knows their after Brennan, which is more than he knew before. Combined with the information about Armin, it feels like a successful day.

"Leave 'em," Booth says, "Let's get out of here."


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: **I thought I owned them, for a few seconds. Then I realized what I actually own is a picture of a phone booth, a plastic set of Bones, a little Castle for my fish tank, and the collected works of Samuel Beckett. Oh well.

**A/N:** Sorry for the delays. Real life got in the way. Bad real life! Real life has been banished to the doghouse, to think about how he's interfered with fic...

* * *

Chapter 14

Site 34 - Brooklyn

"I'm going to kill him," Beckett says, staring out the window.

"Who? Richard?"

"Yes."

"I'm unaware of any action he might have taken to foster your anger, unless you are still mad that he left us behind. You shouldn't feel that way, it was the rational choice to make."

Beckett refrains, barely, from rolling her eyes, but she goes back and sits with Brennan. "It still sucks."

"I will grant you that. That is why I am trying to use my time productively."

"Doing?"

"Hodgins provided us with untraceable internet connections. I am contacting a member of our team on Skype."

Kate gets up from her seat to stand behind Brennan and her laptop just as a face pops up on the screen. Kate is surprised, Brennan's teammate seems to be about Alexis' age.

"Dr. Brennan! Hodgins said you were okay, but I have to say, it's good to see you."

"You as well, Dr. Sweets. I need to ask your professional opinion about something."

"My professional opinion? I thought my profession was useless pseudo-science?"

"Yes, it is. But I have more than enough evidence that show your opinion is valuable."

Kate watches as the boy's ... Dr. Sweets ... face glows. She's starting to see how this awkward and tactless scientist can engender such devotion in people like Booth and Castle.

"I'm touched, Dr. Brennan. What can I help with?"

"Could Taffet have been working for someone, Sweets?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"We have been investigating ... someone else ... and there is evidence that Taffet was, at least at one point, working for someone else."

"As The Gravedigger?"

"Before."

Sweets leans forward. "It would explain some inconsistencies in her behaviour."

"Inconsistencies?"

"Taffet was a sadist. She enjoyed killing. But The Gravedigger personae killed in the most clinical, rational way possible. Taffet, at least in that first case, appeared to be entirely driven by rage and the desire to inflict pain. Why would someone like that bury people alive? She wouldn't be able to get any emotional feedback from that type of death."

"Secondly," Sweets continues, "Why would Taffet ask for a ransom? And why would she allow someone to live after the ransom was paid? We never found any psychological or physical evidence that she was motivated by money."

"So you think she was working for someone."

"Not necessarily for someone. Taffet had strong issues with authority. But she would've been able to partner with someone if she saw it as a way to advance her agenda. She was able to work within the local and federal judicial system for years. You know... Taffet said something to me, right before she died. She said this wasn't over."

"I don't know what that means."

"I didn't either, at the time. But what if she did have a partner? She might have believed that she had help coming to her."

"This is helpful, Dr. Sweets."

"What does this have to do with Broadsky?"

"We have reason to believe that this partner of Taffet's may be the person ordering Broadsky to kill us, among other things."

"Wow. What can we do to help?"

"How do we find this person? All of our original evidence was seized."

Kate speaks up, finally. "Look at the victims."

"Who's that?" Sweets says.

"A friend," Brennan says, "We never found anything specific about the victims, other than they were rich."

"You've been operating under the assumption that The Gravedigger killed for fun," Kate continues. "But if someone else was running things - or at least choosing the targets, there might be a trend there. Didn't the FBI check that out originally, though?"

Sweets looks nonplussed for a moment before continuing. "When the FBI originally looked at The Gravedigger, the profiler on the case decided that the killings were so ritualistic that they had meaning and of themselves. That's why they focused on the killer's profile, as opposed to the victims."

"Can you get me what the FBI had on the victims?" Brennan asks.

"Sure, Dr. Brennan, but I could also help you review..."

"Thank you, Dr. Sweets, but there are some things we know that we can't share yet," Brennan says, by way of dismissal, "Just get the documents to Dr. Hodgins. He knows how to get them to me."

She hangs up after that. Kate shakes her head. She's never met someone so uninterested in social niceties before. She still can't quite figure out how someone like Brennan and someone like Castle would become friends.

Unless Brennan was one of Castle's 'special' friends. Kate shakes her head. She doesn't want to think about that.

The computer beeps before either of them can speak, and Brennan opens the email that has just arrived. Kate looks over Brennan's shoulder at the dozens of documents that have been sent. Someone must have been expecting the request. Kate takes note of the signoff for the email - "Call Angela" - that Brennan appears to ignore.

"I will take a look at the victim's profiles," Brennan says. "I'm hoping you will be willing to take a second look at Taffet herself."

"Why?"

"You have greater familiarity with Bracken's history, and you are looking at the Taffet case without bias. You might see something we've gotten used to overlooking."

Kate nods. The reasoning is sound, so she goes over to the second laptop and pulls up the Taffet documents Brennan has forwarded.

It doesn't take her long to find something.

"Brennan," Kate says, catching the woman's attention. "Look at this."

Brennan comes over, this time to look over Kate's shoulder, as Kate points at the monitor.

"In 1992, Taffet was in the District Attorney's office, but as an intern. She was only in her second year of law a UVa. She graduated in '93 then did a year's clerkship with a judge in the 9th, before serving three years in the Army as a JAG."

"Taffet was Army?"

Kate nods. "It appears the Army paid for law school. There's no way she could have been leading Bracken around in 1992."

"So Bracken is lying."

"At least in part, but..." Something flashes in Kate's memory, and she quickly switches over to a web browser. She pulls up the Senate biographical pages, and goes to Bracken. "Look at this."

"Bracken also did a reserve rotation in the Army from 1995 to 1998."

"Right before his first Congressional run. He obviously did it to bolster his credibility … so why doesn't he ever mention it?"

"You said earlier he had no military background."

"I forgot. Most of the time, politicians like to mention their military service every other sentence."

"So there are at least two opportunities for Bracken to have met Taffet."

"But his story of her leading him around doesn't make any sense … whatever is going on, she's involved, but..."

"This doesn't give us any idea what the connection was, or why."

"No."

Frustrated, they drift away to their own thoughts. Then, after silent agreement, they split up the rest of the victim information and start looking through it again.

This time, there are no quick revelations. After about an hour of staring at the screen, Kate gets up and decides to make coffee. She needs a distraction.

"So, how do you know Castle?" Kate asks, as the coffee is brewing. She swore she didn't really care, but...

But the last few days have changed the game.

Brennan looks up from her screen, obviously surprised to be interrupted. "I would prefer not to go into it."

That is more than enough answer for Kate. "You too slept together."

Brennan cocks her head to the side. "Once... more than a year ago. But I suspect you mean intercourse. No, we have never had intercourse."

Kate shakes her head.

"We considered it, once. I was about to go off on a research trip, and he was on his book tour, last summer. We met up in San Francisco during my layover. It seemed like an attractive offer, but we both decided it would simply confuse our friendship. Though..."

Kate waits Brennan out. Years in the interrogation room have taught her that most people will fill a silence, though Brennan may be a bit different in that regard.

"... I suspect our reasoning, in retrospect, was different from what we stated at the time."

"I don't follow."

"Richard is an attractive man, though the ratio between his acromion and illiac crest are not what I would deem ideal. However, I now understand that my reticence was due to my dormant feelings for Booth. And, given Richard's brooding, I suspect his feelings for you were the cause of his own reticence. As well as his instigation."

"His instigation?"

"He had obviously experienced a recent emotional trauma. In my experience, such an event can cause people to seek out experiences that might act as an emotional soporific that they might otherwise avoid."

Kate nods. Instead of feeling jealous, she quickly finds herself feeling guilty. It's not a feeling she likes.

Brennan, however, seems to have deemed the conversation over, and returns to her screen. "While circumstantial, I do believe I have uncovered an interesting pattern."

Kate shakes off her thoughts, focuses on Brennan again. She pours the coffee and brings the two cups over to the table. "What did you find?"

"Taffet made five abductions that could reasonably be considered attempts to garner wealth. Four of those were successful, with payments of three million, two million, four million, and four point five million. Under the conjecture that she and Bracken are linked, I found that the payment patterns to Taffet closely aligned to payments to Bracken's campaign funds."

"Look here," Brennan says. "The first two abductions were in summer and early fall of 1998. In the two months after a kidnapping, the Bracken campaign fund sees an influx of new funds almost identical to the values paid to Taffet. Then there are no abductions until campaign season of 2000, when again, eight point five million is paid in ransom, and again, within two months, Bracken sees an influx of an additional eight million."

"How did you find this? Why didn't anyone else?"

"The donations are all spread out into hundreds of separate donations below the ten thousand dollar limit, so that they can remain anonymous. The data must be publicly reported to the IRS. I don't know why anyone would look if they didn't already suspect Bracken and The Gravedigger were related in some way. Furthermore, I had the advantage of knowing where this data is. A former intern of mine has an abundance of free time and a strong concern about the role of hidden organizations' play in the government and society. He has been collecting and publishing campaign finance information for the last two years."

"Lucky us. Maybe he can testify, when we put this all together."

"Oh, well, he's a former aide to a serial killer who is now in psychiatric lockdown. I am unsure a jury would be inclined to listen to his testimony."

Kate shakes her head. She's delved enough into Brennan's world for the day. "So we know that The Gravedigger had an ulterior motive. We know she's connected to Bracken. We know Bracken lied to us. But we're no closer to the Dragon or what the hell is really going on."

"No."

Kate stands up, stretches. She remembers that the email to Brennan mentioned an urgent call. Maybe someone else has some information for them, something to help them get out of this ever deepening maze.

But before she can mention it to the anthropologist, Castle and Booth come through the door.

"We found something," Castle says with his normal ebullience. Next to him, Booth seems more subdued.

"A couple of somethings," Booth says. "None of them I like."

"We found several things not to like as well," Brennan says, from behind Kate. It's then that Kate realizes that Booth has a cut over his eye and Castle's hand is lightly bleeding.

She suspects she's going to agree with Booth. There is nothing here to like.


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: **I owned both shows, but they traded them in for some shoes. One show per shoe. But you have to understand, they are really cool shoes.

* * *

Chapter 15

Site 34 - Brooklyn

"And then I hit him with a rock."

Booth isn't really listening. After they got back to the apartment, and received a round of admonishments from the two women, Bones got down to business fixing them up as Castle recounted their morning.

Booth's injuries are mostly of the bruising variety, so Bones left him with some ice in a ziploc bag, but Castle's hand turned out to be surprisingly deeply cut. Booth had startled when Castle had opened his hand to show a cut that needed stitches. The man hadn't said a thing about it on either the walk or subway ride back to Brooklyn.

Booth shakes his head, despite his headache. Castle is a more interesting guy, once you got past the jokes, than Booth had originally guessed. He watches as Castle, backlit by the fading light in the window, gets sewn up by Bones, not seeming to notice the pain as he explains their fight in the alley.

Booth can't think. Something is sitting there, itching at the back of his head, and he can't place it. Something about Bones and Castle, backlit by the sun, so that they are just dark silhouettes in his vision. Bones is a tall woman, but now, as a backlit shadow, she looks tiny in comparison to Castle's larger frame. His lizardy hindbrain sees it before his conscious mind puts all the pieces together.

"He was pointing the gun at you," Booth says, cutting off whatever conversation is going on around him.

"I'm pretty sure he was pointing it at you, Booth," Castle replies.

"No, not today," Booth says to Castle. He turns slightly towards Bones. "Bones, Broadsky was aiming for you."

Bones looks at him in that way she has, her head cocked to the side.

"When he … got Vincent …" Booth says, sheepishly, not wanting to bring it up, but knowing it's necessary.

Bones shakes her head. "He shot Vincent because he answered your phone."

"He was expecting you," Booth says, and turns to Beckett. "Look at them. Even in this light, would you mistake the two?"

Beckett looks over at them. "No."

"And Broadsky's not going to confuse me and Vincent, even through an IR scope. But Bones and Vincent are … were … about the same size."

"But Booth, Broadsky is after you. He wants to show he's better than you."

"Yeah," Booth says, shaking his head in the negative, "I don't think I buy that. Snipers … we just don't think that way. But I think he wanted everyone to believe that."

"Collateral damage," Beckett says.

"Yeah," Booth replies.

"Wanna explain that?" Castle asks, flexing his sewn up hand.

"If Broadsky shoots and kills Brennan, everyone would wonder why. There'd be an investigation. But, if everyone thinks he's targeting Booth and then shoots Brennan instead, then it was just a mistake."

"Ah, how Hitchcockian. Eliminate the motive. That fits with what ugly, dumb, and bald was saying in the alley."

Booth nods as Bones asks, "They were looking for me?"

No one speaks for a minute or so, but both couples move to be closer to each other. Bones does little but lean her head against Booth's shoulder. Beckett paces in tight little circles behind Castle.

"Another piece of the puzzle," Beckett says, breaking the silence. "What about Armin?"

"Carcetti," Castle answers her. "The NYPD had evidence that Armin had started taking money from Carcetti to derail some police investigations. It looks like he was trying to stick some Westie murders on Pulgatti to confuse the investigation, get it kicked in court. But when he died, the NYPD hid it."

"Didn't want to tarnish the hero's legacy," Booth chimes in, "We're guessing Raglan and McAllister were there to kill Pulgatti and stop Armin, but when Armin got whacked..."

"Carcetti," Beckett says, sighing. "At least it's something, after this morning."

"What?" Castle asks.

"We found that Taffet and Bracken are connected," Bones says, "But it appears Bracken was lying about how."

"You still have a burner phone?" Beckett asks Booth. He nods and points to the duffel bag by the door. She grabs it out of the bag and nods thanks. "I'll be right back."

Bones tells the two men what she and Beckett had found while Beckett makes her call. Booth lets his mind wander again. If Bracken has fed them a line about Taffet, then pointing them at Armin could be a trick. Or it could be the truth; Bracken is enough of a politician to know how to mix the two, and obviously smarter than they've given him credit for. Just like with Broadsky, Booth feels like they're just reacting.

He wonders if Bracken wanted to get caught. All of a sudden, their little expedition to get the Senator seems like it was too easy.

Beckett comes out of the bedroom after about two minutes and greets everyone by throwing the burner phone across the room to break against the far wall. She takes two breaths with her hands on her hips before speaking.

"Where did you find the thing about Armin?" she asks.

Castle answers. "We had trouble at first. It had been sealed because he was undercover."

"Yeah," Beckett says, like she's expected the answer. "Undercover records, if part of an active investigation, are sealed for up to twenty years. My mother never could have seen them. It was a plant."

Booth nods, figuring as much, but doesn't say anything. Beckett continues. "I talked to Ryan. Carcetti doesn't exist."

"How does he know?" Castle asks.

"He says Carcetti's a snipe hunt, an old joke. Whenever a DA or a reporter or someone would come sniffing around gangs, thinking they could take down all of organized crime in ten seconds, the gang cops would point them at Carcetti. It was a way for them to signal each other that they were dealing with an idiot. Got to be such a legend, some ex-reporter guy down in Baltimore even worked the guy into a TV show."

"So they sent Bracken on a snipe hunt twenty years ago, only, unlike most people, he never caught on," Booth says, as Castle mumbles, "I knew I knew that name," to himself.

"Or he did, and now he's pointing us on the same wild goose chase," Beckett adds.

"Why?"

"Like you said before, Castle, to buy time. Either he knows Carcetti is a joke and so we spend a lot of time chasing nothing, or he doesn't and he thinks we'll go catch some real person that isn't him. I'm going to kill this guy twice."

Booth stands up, paces around. They've wasted an entire day to get five minutes worth of info. "I don't know about all of you," he says, "But I'm tired of being led around by the nose."

Bones goes to speak, seems to realize he's not talking literally, and closes her mouth.

"Every time we think we're in control, we find these guys playing us. We need a move here, people."

"We go after Bracken again," Castle says.

Both Booth and Beckett shake their head. "The first time was obviously too easy. He wanted it to happen. This time around, he's going to be locked up so tight even his grandmother will need Secret Service vetting before seeing him."

"Broadsky then."

"Broadsky'll have us sighted and shot before we get within a mile of him, and we don't have the first clue where he is."

"You could talk to your friend Angela," Beckett says. Booth stops his pacing and stares at Beckett for a second.

"Shit, you're right. I forgot we asked for her help."

Bones goes over to the laptop, fires up Skype once again. A few seconds later, Angela's pretty face fills the screen.

"Sweetie! I was getting worried..."

"I'm sorry, Angela. It has been a … frustrating … day."

"Well," Angela says, touching her control panel remote, "I'm not sure what I have to tell you guys is going to make the day any better, but it is big."

"Tell us," Booth says, over Bones shoulder. Angela looks from Bones to him, and then to Beckett and Castle. She seemingly decides not to ask about the strangers or to comment on Booth's rudeness.

"Anyway, finding the guys you were looking for proved to be worse than hay in a haystack, but I finally was able to take your advice and look at travel records. I assumed that even if the Army falsified your assignments, they'd still have to send you to wherever you needed to be, so I created a program that mapped every travel requisition that didn't match with a corresponding operational assignment. From there, I found all situations where more than one point converged."

The screen changes from Angela's face to a series of lines that look vaguely, to Booth, like the flight maps that you find in the back of an airline magazine, only more dense and more colorful. He gets the idea, and wants Angela to get on with it, but knows she's enough of an honorary squint that she won't be derailed from her explanations.

"Using that data, I was unable to find a match for all of the people you listed, Booth, so instead I tried to find all situations where there was any match amongst the people you mentioned. I found one match that had everyone except you and Leisenger. I tracked back the eighteen people that were listed at that event, and you won't believe what I found."

"What, Angela?" Bones asks.

"Lemme show you," Angela replies, and the map is replaced with a photograph of seventeen soldiers, standing in a mountainous area of mildly jungle-like climate. All four apartment dwellers react immediately, each pointing at parts of the screen.

"Bracken!"

"That's the Dulce River."

"Is that Lockwood?"

"And Coonan."

"Guys!" Angela says. "You're missing the point. Look at the one woman in the picture."

"Yes, Angela, we saw Taffet."

Angela waves her remote in exasperation. "Seriously!? I hunt forever for this and you already knew?"

"We just found out," Booth says, "just today. This is good. You did good. Where is this from?"

"Guatemala," says Bones, before Angela can answer.

"How do you know that?" Angela and Booth ask in unison.

"I recognize the Dulce River, near El Golfete. I have been there, several times."

"Yes," Angela says, "it's Guatemala. In July, 1997."

"What the hell are U.S. Special Forces doing in Guatemala? Aren't they an ally?"

"Now," Booth answers. "But Guatemala spent more than 50 years in civil war, and, unfortunately, we ... and by we I mean the CIA..." he shakes his head, unable to answer.

"We supported the de facto slaughter of hundreds of civilians," Bones says, before seeing Booth's face turn white. She cuts her narrative short.

"But …" she continues after touching Booth's hand, "that ended in 1996. U.S. involvement, outside of U.N. support, was nonexistent in 1997."

"Or should have been."

"Booth, who is that?" Bones asks, pointing at the screen. Her finger is over a small man, standing between Taffet and Bracken. To Taffet's other side stands Broadsky, with the rest of the men crouched in front of the four.

"Colonel Ramon Martinez. Head of The Program."

"Is that Broadsky?" Castle asks, pointing at Broadsky's picture. Booth nods.

"Well, we know about these three. Why not talk to the Colonel guy then?"

Booth shakes his head. "He's USSOCOM now. No way we'd get an opportunity to talk to him."

Castle asks, "What's uso comb?" just as Bones says, "No he isn't."

"Yes he is, Bones. He's one of the highest ranking men in the military, at least for a few more weeks."

"No he isn't, Booth," Bones says, just as Beckett asks, "A few more weeks?"

Booth answers Beckett first. "Word is, he'll be confirmed as Director of the CIA sometime in the next month. What do you mean that's not Martinez?"

Bones leans in closer to the screen. "I've met Martinez several times. He had oversight during my missions to identify the remains found at several mass grave sites. I last saw him about five months ago. This is not him."

"Bones, I served with the man for years. That's Martinez."

"No. Angela, can you pull up a recent picture of General Martinez?"

"Yeah, Sweetie. Just a sec."

Angela zooms the photo to frame Martinez, then shows his official General's portrait alongside it on screen. To four of the people, they look like a younger and older version of the same man. But one of them sees the differences.

Bones stands up, leans closer to the screen. "Look at the ratio of the height to the width of the occipital cavity, as well as the cresting of the supraorbital foramen. There is also a slightly pronounced curvature of the aveolar process in the younger man. These are two different people."

"You can't tell that," Beckett says. "Besides, that's not a great picture, and people change."

Angela, Booth, and surprisingly Castle all speak up, "No..."

They stop. Booth looks at the others and continues. "If Bones says they're different people, they're different people. Only question is, which one is really Martinez?"

"And who is the other one?" Castle finishes. "Doppelgangers! This is so cool!"

"Booth," Bones says after a second. "I know why they're after me. I know what's going on."

* * *

**A/N: **I know it's mean to leave it there. But the next useful breakpoint was about 2500 words away, and I didn't want to post a 5000+ work chapter...


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer: **I lied about the cool shoes. I don't own the shows or shoes.

* * *

Chapter 16

Site 34 - Brooklyn

As everyone waits, Brennan turns back to Angela.

"Angela, is one of my interns there?"

Angela nods and leaves the frame for a second. She returns moments later with Wendell. As Brennan talks to him, the others finally give up and sit down.

"Mr. Bray... can you go to modular bone storage and retrieve the contents of box 447 for me?"

"Sure, Dr. Brennan. Anything in particular?"

"No, please bring the entire box."

Wendell nods and does as she asks. Brennan turns to face everyone, moving the laptop around so that Angela can continue to participate.

"Um, Bones? Can you give the rest of us a clue what's going on?"

"Do you remember our second case together?" Brennan asks Booth.

"Cleo Eller, sure, Bones. What does Cleo Eller have to do with anything?"

"I had just come back to DC from three months in Guatemala, helping identify mass graves from their civil war. When I was there, I found remains that didn't fit with the others. Dental floridation and other markers on one set of remains indicated non-Guatemalan origins. I brought the skull back immediately and had the rest shipped back to the States for further study."

"Yeah, I remember the skull," Booth says.

"However," she continues, "after you had me detained at the airport, I was unable to continue my research." Castle and Beckett both look at Booth, but he shakes his head in a not-now gesture, so they go back to listening. "After Eller, I meant to return to my work, but our partnership took precedence."

"Dr. Brennan," Wendell interrupts, coming back into frame. "I hate to … um … box 447 was empty."

"I assumed as much. Please inform Dr. Saroyan that during the break-in a partial skeleton was stolen. I assume nothing else has been found stolen during the break-in?"

"Ah, no, but IT does believe that your files were accessed, though they can't tell what was done to them."

"Thank you, Mr. Bray. Please inform Dr. Saroyan immediately."

Wendell shakes his head, but leaves as ordered.

"Box 447 contained the remains I brought back with me. I had an opportunity, due to an increase in free time a few months ago, to revisit my findings."

"Light caseload?" Castle asks.

"I was attending fewer after work dinners and similar events," Brennan says, and she and Booth share a quick, sheepish look.

"I was able to identify the remains as a male of Hispanic and Lebanese, approximately thirty-five years of age, from the western part of Texas, with injuries consistent with service in the United States military, as well as exposure to a bombing in his early twenties."

"Shit. Are you saying what I think you're saying, Bones?"

"Yes."

"Ummm...?" Beckett says, shrugging and shaking her head with confusion.

"Martinez was born in El Paso. As a West Point cadet, he was visiting his father, a Marine Colonel, and mother, a Lebanese translator, at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut," Booth says.

"He was there for the embassy bombing," Beckett says.

"Yeah. Lost both his parents, but pulled twelve people out of the wreckage, even while heavily injured himself. Won a bronze star before he was even commissioned." Booth turns back to Brennan. "So what you're saying is that you found Martinez."

"I didn't know that at the time, but yes, it is a reasonable conclusion, as the victim died from a gunshot sometime in summer of 1997."

"So the guy in the picture was the real Martinez, and this new guy..."

"Who we now know of as General Martinez..."

"...is an imposter."

"Worse. He's an imposter who's about to be America's highest ranking spy."

"Angela," Brennan says, turning to the screen. "Can you do a facial recognition screening against the later General Martinez's face?"

"Sure, sweetie. But who do I compare him to?"

"Any pictures you can find of followers of Montt or members of the URNG prior to 1996."

Angela frowns. "I guess I can try."

Castle speaks up as Angela goes to work. "But how did they know you'd figured it out?"

"My research in this area must be cleared by the U.S. government or the U.N. before public release, due to the political sensitivity of the work. And as General Martinez was my prior contact for this material, and because I wanted the Army's support in tracking down the victim's specific identity..."

"You sent your report to him, to forward to the right people," Booth says as she nods. "And a few weeks later, Taffet get antsy in her cell, wins an appeal on claims of suppressed evidence, and whoever this guy is who's pretending to be Martinez knows things are starting to fall apart on him..."

Booth stands up, runs his hand through his hair. "... and so he sends Broadsky to clean up. That's why Broadsky was so adamant that he was on the right side. He's got a four-star general telling him what to do, so of course he thinks he's right."

"Guys," Angela interrupts, "I think I found something."

They all turn to the laptop as the screen changes once again. General Martinez's official picture has returned, and next to it, this time, is younger version of the same man. The younger man is dressed plainly in camouflage and standing next to an older man in a gaudy general's uniform.

"Yes, that is the same man," Brennan says immediately.

"Right," Angela says. "So the man on the left, in the peacock garb, is General Montt, and our imposter here is really Colonel Esteban Garcia Marco Favaretto."

"Damn," Booth says.

"Sorry," Castle says, "I seem to be the only one without a degree in Guatemalan history."

"General Montt is the once and former president of Guatemala and is currently serving out an eighty year sentence for genocide against indigenous peoples. Favaretto is a half-Spanish, half-Brazilian Colonel and and one time head of Montt's secret police."

"Yeah, the one that everyone called 'El Carnicero,'" Booth adds.

"The Butcher?" Beckett asks.

"Yeah," Booth answers.

"He was known for his execution-style, which included several types of dis..."

"He was as bad as they come," Booth says, interrupting. He stands up.

"Okay, so," he says, "The civil war ends, and the CIA has a problem. They backed the wrong guy. Not only the wrong guy, but a very very wrong guy. So they need to clean-up. They send Bracken and Taffet..."

"You think they were CIA?" Beckett interrupts.

"Yeah. From what you said, their military records were so thin they had to either be pasted on after the fact by someone, or they were almost immediately loaned out to the CIA or NSA or something, and their entire records redacted. Either way, their presence in Guatemala, combined with the total lack of details in their military records basically screams CIA."

"So...," Booth begins again, "...The CIA … they send Bracken and Taffet to go identify and tell Martinez's squad who to kill. But then they find Favaretto, and they recognize that he's a fellow member of their little psychopath club, with the added bonus of looking exactly like the uptight Colonel they are stuck with..."

Booth is rolling now, in the full story-telling-mode that Beckett thought only Castle had.

"So they all make a deal. They kill Martinez instead of Favaretto. Favaretto takes Martinez's place. Martinez teaches them the tricks of the kidnapping and torture trade, taking them out of the realm of the Raglan and McAllister days, into full on Gravedigger mode. They use the ransoms to fuel Bracken's rise. At the same time, Favaretto uses Martinez's position to rise through the ranks, until he gets what he wants, which is run of the CIA. With Favaretto as the head of the CIA, and Bracken up for the Chair of the Armed Forces Committee, The Butcher is going to have carte blanche to take the CIA back into Guatemala and finish what Montt couldn't..."

"Okay," Beckett says to Booth, "You're starting to sound like Castle. How the hell could Favaretto even pull off an act like that for fifteen years?"

"It's not as tough as you think. Both of Martinez's parents died in the bombing. He's got no siblings. He was a field Colonel, so he didn't interact with many people regularly, save his men, and other than Broadsky, nobody stayed in the unit longer than twelve months or so, and most of them would never interact with him more than a few words now and then anyway. When you're a Specialist, a Colonel is closer to God than anything else."

"And it all works, for years," Castle says, "Until Temperance finds Martinez's skull, and you and I find Coonan and Lockwood, and they find Taffet, and we find Bracken, and it all starts getting too close." Castle shudders for a second. "You investigated your mother's case for years, and it was fine. They didn't care if you found Raglan and McAllister or any of it. They just cared that you found Coonan."

Beckett can see the wheels of guilt rolling in Castle's head. She wouldn't have found Coonan without Castle's money. She shakes her head, silently communicating to him that it isn't his fault. Neither Booth nor Brennan notice, but Castle seems to calm down a little.

"So they start cleaning house. Broadsky in one direction, Marks in the other, both thinking they are acting with the backing of the Army and the U.S. Government."

"They're backed by a Senator and the soon-to-be-Director of the CIA - they are backed by the government."

"Hey," Booth says angrily. Castle shrugs an apology, but doesn't take it back.

"Booth," Brennan says, distracting him away from Castle. "We don't have any evidence."

"You sayin' you don't believe it, Bones?"

"No, Booth. I'm saying we no longer have any evidence. Every person who was there is either dead or on Bracken and Favaretto's side. They have the remains. They have destroyed the paperwork. They have my files."

"But we know."

"Yes, which is why they will most likely continue to try and kill us, but even if they fail... we abducted a sitting U.S. Senator … we won't be able to testify. And even if we do, and somehow succeed … you served under Favaretto for years. If he is convicted, then all of your actions as a member of The Program would be up for indictment."

Booth waves that off with his hand. "I'm more concerned about getting this guy than what might happen to me, afterwards."

"She's right though," Beckett says. "We have no legal way to go after Bracken or Favaretto. Hell, they don't even have to come after us anymore. All they had to do was scare us enough, and we ran around, tampering with our case while they went and cleaned up the last of the evidence."

Castle looks around. Both Beckett and Booth are spinning themselves into circles, and even Brennan seems confused as to what to do next. But Castle can't seem to stop thinking of a phrase.

"Before the devil knows you're there..."

"Huh?" Booth asks.

"Country lyrics, really, Castle?"

Castle stands up. "They don't have to come after us, but they will. These guys have spent fifteen years using the same trick over and over again. They're reliant on it. So they'll try again."

"And that's a comfort?"

"No. That's a strategy. If they want to come after us … I say we let them."

* * *

**A/N: **I wrote a 900 word story in an hour this week. It got 25 times the views this story has gotten as a whole. But I'm prouder of this one, so thank you for sticking with it, the 20 or so of you, I see checking each chapter.

**A/N2: **Montt is a real person, though the rest of this is, quite obviously, completely made up and shouldn't be considered related to real life in any way, shape, or form.


End file.
